Leal

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: trustworthy person, from Sp., Port, leal loyal, faithful to Equiv. (not cogn.): Pol.: Skora. 369 Lee Leatherbarrow

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/leal/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Leal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Uruguay it is the 68th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • UYUruguay1 in 417(measured from records)
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 555
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 740

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Brazil (inferred from the name graph)

≈230,000 people, est.

#791 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
337 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 417 (inferred from the name graph)

Uruguay

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

LealLatin(measured from records)
ЛеальCyrillic(measured from records)

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

From a Spanish and Portuguese nickname for a loyal person (Spanish/Portuguese leal ‘loyal’).

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Leal is read(measured from records)

Leal is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Spanish50%

    trustworthy person, from Sp., Port, leal loyal, faithful to Equiv. (not cogn.): Pol.: Skora. 369 Lee Leatherbarrow

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • Portuguese29%

    loyal

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

    adhering to the rules of propriety, fair, honest, loyal, true

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • English15%

    From a Spanish and Portuguese nickname for a loyal person (Spanish/Portuguese leal ‘loyal’).

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    from ME lele, OFr leial 'loyal, faithful'; first attested William Leleman 1297 SRY

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Leal counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Leal is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#115≈230,000 est.≈1 in 932313Leal214
VE Venezuela#100≈52,000 est.≈1 in 555—Leal89
US United States—35,9581 in 9.3K36KLeal337
CO Colombia#214≈36,000 est.≈1 in 1.4K30Leal152
ES Spain#20520,7171 in 2.4K21KLeal169
CL Chile#144≈18,000 est.≈1 in 1K1Leal119
PT Portugal#89≈14,000 est.≈1 in 740—Leal145
UY Uruguay#688,1321 in 4178.1KLeal49

Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: IBGE — Nomes (census name API); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the co-datosgov-candidates register; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Leal is also recorded as 8 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Leal', Léal, Lèal, Lëäl, Leäl

  • French surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Spain, Philippines

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Léal, Léál, Lêal, Lèal

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Léal

  • Lao surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Chile, United States, Thailand

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Leloup, เลอลุ, เลอล, Léál, เลอลี

  • Swedish surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Sweden, Denmark, Spain

    Languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Léal

  • Polish surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Poland, United States, Spain, United Kingdom

    Also written Léal

  • Turkish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Türkiye, United Kingdom

    Languages: Turkish, Azerbaijani

    Also written Leâl, Lëäl

  • Croatian surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, United States, Philippines, Argentina

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Serbian

    Also written Léal

49 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Leal is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • nickname for a loyal or trustworthy person, from Old French leial, Spanish and Portuguese leal ‘loyal’, ‘faithful (to obligations)’, Latin legalis, from lex, ‘law’, ‘obligation’ (genitive legis).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

160017001800190020002100Juan de Valdés Leal, b. 1622Ramón de la Fuente Leal, b. 1907Branco, b. 1964Carlos Leal, b. 1969Sharon Leal, b. 1972Hugo Leal, b. 1980José Carlos Garcia Leal, b. 1980Diego Godín, b. 1986Mayra Leal, b. 1987Rayssa Leal, b. 2008

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalEstimado/a Leal,Dear Leal, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Leal,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 57 sources across 32 countries.

Official registers attesting Leal
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202036K#955
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201036K#969
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200028K#1,133
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—21K#261
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—21K#261
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—8.1K—
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—30#86
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 7

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Leal mean?
In Spanish, trustworthy person, from Sp., Port, leal loyal, faithful to Equiv. (not cogn.): Pol.: Skora. 369 Lee Leatherbarrow
Where does the name Leal come from?
From a Spanish and Portuguese nickname for a loyal person (Spanish/Portuguese leal ‘loyal’). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Leal?
A machine transcription gives /leal/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Leal have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 227 thousand people named Leal in Brazil, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leal.
Where is Leal most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Leal is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 417 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Leal?
In the United States, the national register counted 35,958 people named Leal in 2010, about 1 in 9.3 thousand residents.
How common is Leal compared with other names?
In Brazil, Leal is the 115th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Leal?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/leal

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Leal” — the 115th most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Leal parses inside a full name →