Mendez
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Spanish Mendez, 'son of Mendo', a reduced form of Menendo
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/mɛndɛs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Mendez is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Angola it is the 18th most common surname.
- UYUruguay1 in 86(measured from records)
- CRCosta Rica1 in 114
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 182
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Mendez itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #154 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 468 (measured from records)
- 1 in 86 (inferred from the name graph)
161,717 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Mendes in PT Portugal, AO Angola and Méndez in UY Uruguay.
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 Spanish Mendez, 'son of Mendo', a reduced form of Menendo.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mendez 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #202 | 161,717 | 1 in 2.1K | 166K | Mendez | 468 |
| VE Venezuela | #37 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 240 | 775 | Mendez | 116 |
| AR Argentina | #70 | 90,174 | 1 in 504 | 90K | Mendez | 143 |
| ES Spain | #47 | 77,195 | 1 in 648 | 77K | Mendez | 223 |
| CO Colombia | #80 | ≈73,000 est. | ≈1 in 672 | 56 | Mendez | 170 |
| PT Portugal | #23 | ≈55,000 est. | ≈1 in 186 | — | Mendes | 199 |
| CR Costa Rica | #26 | 44,680 | 1 in 114 | 45K | Mendez | 126 |
| UY Uruguay | #473 | 39,366 | 1 in 86 | 39K | Méndez | 89 |
| SV El Salvador | #37 | ≈36,000 est. | ≈1 in 182 | 38K | Mendez | 75 |
| AO Angola | #18 | ≈30,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 2 | Mendes | 65 |
| GW Guinea-Bissau | — | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 108 | 85K | — | 31 |
161,717 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; A comprehensive look at the most common surnames in Guinea-Bissau, compiled by the Instituto Nacional de Estatística de; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)
Mendez is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
patronymic from the personal name Mendo (see Mendes, of which this is the Galician equivalent).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Basque, MENDEZ . Por los siglos de los siglos . "Siècle. Peu connu sauf dans sa forme mentez, de très longtemps (litm. durant un siècle)" Lrq. Kongregazionea Jainkoak lagunt dezala mendez . Prop 1906, 126. Gerthakari hoik [...] ezarri zituen [...] liburu ederrenetarik batean. Irakurriko dire mendez . Ib. 117.
as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia
In Basque, MENDEZ . " Bertzen mendez bizi da (B)" Gte Erd 223.
as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia
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)
- Gloria Marínb. 1919MXnot in their usual nameMexican actress (1919–1983)
- Tony Mendezb. 1940USAmerican CIA technical operations officer and writer
- Antonio Tobias Mendezb. 1963USsculptor
- Roberto Baladob. 1969CUnot in their usual nameCuban boxer
- Mike Mendezb. 1973USAmerican film director, editor and screenwriter
- Mikayla Mendezb. 1980USAmerican pornographic actress, born 1980
- Lindsay Mendezb. 1983USAmerican actress and singer
- AJ Leeb. 1987USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestler and author
- Erica Mendezb. 1988USAmerican voice actress
- Alex Mendezb. 2000USAmerican soccer 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 48 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 166K | #155 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 162K | #162 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 113K | #242 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 90K | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 77K | #53 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 77K | #53 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 45K | #42 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 39K | — |
| SV El Salvador | El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived) | — | 38K | #38 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 56 | #62 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Mendez mean, and where does it come from?
- from Spanish Mendez, 'son of Mendo', a reduced form of Menendo. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Mendez?
- A machine transcription gives /mɛndɛs/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Mendez have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 162 thousand people named Mendez, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mendez.
- Where is Mendez most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mendez is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 86 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Mendez?
- In the United States, the national register counted 161,717 people named Mendez in 2010, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Mendez compared with other names?
- In the United States, Mendez is the 202nd most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mendez?
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/mendezThe 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, “Mendez” — the 202nd most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.