Melgar
surname · Latin script
Meaning: topographic name for someone who lived by a field of lucerne, Spanish melgar (a collective derivative of mielga ‘lucerne’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/melɡaɾ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Melgar is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Bolivia than in any other country, where it is the 37th most common surname.
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 535(inferred from the name graph)
- HNHonduras≈1 in 576
- BOBolivia≈1 in 648
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.
- Bolivia (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 243 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 535 (inferred from the name graph)
≈18,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
El Salvador, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
topographic name for someone who lived by a field of lucerne, Spanish melgar (a collective derivative of mielga ‘lucerne’. Late Latin melica, for classical Latin Medica (herba) ‘plant’ from Media). There are several places in Spain named with this word, and the surname may be a habitational name from any one of them.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Where in the world(measured from records)
Melgar 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BO Bolivia | #37 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 648 | — | Melgar | 60 |
| HN Honduras | #73 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 576 | — | Melgar | 46 |
| SV El Salvador | #85 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 535 | 13K | Melgar | 70 |
| GT Guatemala | #58 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Melgar | 69 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈9,300 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Melgar | 48 |
| US United States | — | 9,106 | 1 in 37K | 10K | Melgar | 243 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 2,005 | 1 in 1.7K | 2K | — | 44 |
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: El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Melgar is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Spanish, by a field of lucerne, Sp. melgar (a collective deriv. of mielga lucerne, LL melica, for class. L Medica (herba) plant from Media). There are several places in Spain named with this word; the surname may be a habitation name from any one of them. Vars. : Mell(hu)ish.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In Spanish, to mark strips of land for sowing (seeds)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Spanish, variant of Melchior.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Portuguese, to annoy, to bother, to pester, to nag (especially through repeated words or constant presence)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Filipino, a surname from Spanish, mostly found in Oriental Mindoro and Laguna
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Mariano Melgarb. 1790PEPeruvian poet (1790–1815)
- Francisco Martín Melgarb. 1849ESSpanish lawyer (1849-1926)
- Bernardino de Melgar Abreub. 1864ESSpanish politician
- Juan Alberto Melgar Castrob. 1930HNPresident of Honduras
- Julián Sánchez Melgarb. 1955ESSpanish judge and prosecutor
- Fernand Melgarb. 1961CHdirector and documentary producer
- Pablo Melgarb. 1980GTfootballer
- Cecilia Costa Melgarb. 1992CLChilean tennis player
- Kevin Melgarb. 1992PAPanamanian footballer
- Noelia Zeballosb. 1994BOnot in their usual nameBolivian tennis player
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 31 sources across 18 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SV El Salvador | El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived) | — | 13K | #94 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 10K | #3,480 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 9.1K | #3,897 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.3K | #5,977 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 2K | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- Where does the name Melgar come from?
- topographic name for someone who lived by a field of lucerne, Spanish melgar (a collective derivative of mielga ‘lucerne’. Late Latin melica, for classical Latin Medica (herba) ‘plant’ from Media). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Melgar?
- A machine transcription gives /melɡaɾ/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Melgar mean?
- Recorded meaning: topographic name for someone who lived by a field of lucerne, Spanish melgar (a collective derivative of mielga ‘lucerne’.
- In which country does Melgar have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 18 thousand people named Melgar in Bolivia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled melgar.
- How common is the name Melgar?
- In the United States, the national register counted 9,106 people named Melgar in 2010, about 1 in 37 thousand residents.
- How common is Melgar compared with other names?
- In Bolivia, Melgar is the 37th most common surname of 29,432 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Melgar?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/melgarThe 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, “Melgar” — the 37th most common surname in Bolivia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.