Mendoza

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: from a place in the province of Alava, so called from Basque mendi mountain + otz cold + the def. art. -a. Meneely see McNeilly Menel see Meynell

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

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

Mendoza is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country, where it is the 14th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • NINicaragua≈1 in 98(inferred from the name graph)
  • ECEcuador1 in 141
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 147

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.

Philippines (inferred from the name graph)

≈400,000 people, est.

#149 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
496 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 98 (inferred from the name graph)

Nicaragua, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MendozaLatin(measured from records)
მენდოზაGeorgian(measured from records)
ΜεντοσαGreek(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)

'person from Mendoza', Spain ('the cold mountain').

Sources 1

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

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

How Mendoza is read(measured from records)

Mendoza is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.

  • Spanish72%

    from a place in the province of Alava, so called from Basque mendi mountain + otz cold + the def. art. -a. Meneely see McNeilly Menel see Meynell

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

  • English16%

    'person from Mendoza', Spain ('the cold mountain').

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

    river, prov, town, Argentina

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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)

Mendoza 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 Mendoza is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PH Philippines#14≈400,000 est.≈1 in 271—Mendoza182
US United States#348242,7711 in 1.4K243KMendoza496
PE Peru#18≈200,000 est.≈1 in 156437KMendoza165
VE Venezuela#17≈190,000 est.≈1 in 1471.3KMendoza144
CO Colombia#44≈130,000 est.≈1 in 38365Mendoza190
EC Ecuador#8120,1151 in 141120KMendoza103
NI Nicaragua#8≈63,000 est.≈1 in 98—Mendoza90
SV El Salvador#32≈38,000 est.≈1 in 17139KMendoza82

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: the pe-reniec-name-freq register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Mendoza is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname59 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Mëndözä, Méndoza, Mendoza', Mendöza, Mêndözâ

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Méndoza

  • Indonesian surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Indonesia, United States, Peru

    Languages: Indonesian, Malagasy

    Also written Méndózá, Mëndözä, Mėndözã

  • Lao surname26 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Thailand, Philippines, United States

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Mendosa, เมนโดซา, เมนโดซ่า, Mëndözä, Méndózá

  • Japanese surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Japan, United States, Peru, Philippines

    Also written Mëndözä, Mèndòzà

  • Russian surname13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, United States, Russia, Ukraine

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Мендоса, Мендоза, Mendosa, Męńdözå, Mendóza

  • Croatian surname17 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Spain, Peru

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Serbian

    Also written Мендоза, Мендоса, Mendosa, Mêndôzâ

77 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)

Mendoza 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.

  • habitational name from several places in the provinces of Arava and Biscay called Mendoza, named with Basque mendi ‘mountain’ otz ‘cold’ + the definite article -a.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Filipino, a common surname from Spanish [in turn from Basque], equivalent to Spanish Mendoza, the 5th commonest in the Philippines, widespread across the Tagalog-speaking regions, but most widely concentrated in Batangas, Quezon and Oriental Mindoro provinces

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

  • In Basque, a hamlet in Vitoria, Álava, Basque Country, Spain

    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)

1400160018002000Antonio de Mendoza, b. 1494Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, b. 1581César Vallejo, b. 1892Guillermo Lasso, b. 1955Álex de la Iglesia, b. 1965Leopoldo López, b. 1971Natalie Jackson Mendoza, b. 1978Ricardo Osorio, b. 1980Dayana Mendoza, b. 1986Sergio Perez, b. 1990

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 Mendoza,Dear Mendoza, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Mendoza,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 53 sources across 33 countries.

Official registers attesting Mendoza
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
PE PeruRENIEC — Apellidos más frecuentes (national DNI bearer counts, 2025)2025437K#17
PE PeruRENIEC — DNI population names2019351K#18
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020243K#88
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010243K#88
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000169K#134
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names2024120K#11
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—120K—
SV El SalvadorEl Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived)—39K#35
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)19952.5K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20072.3K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20241.3K—
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—65#53

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)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

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 Mendoza come from?
'person from Mendoza', Spain ('the cold mountain'). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Mendoza?
A machine transcription gives /mend̪osa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What does the name Mendoza mean?
In Spanish, from a place in the province of Alava, so called from Basque mendi mountain + otz cold + the def. art. -a. Meneely see McNeilly Menel see Meynell
In which country does Mendoza have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 402 thousand people named Mendoza in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mendoza.
How common is the name Mendoza?
In the United States, the national register counted 242,771 people named Mendoza in 2010, about 1 in 1.4 thousand residents.
How common is Mendoza compared with other names?
In the Philippines, Mendoza is the 14th most common surname of 876,464 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Mendoza?

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

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, “Mendoza” — the 14th most common surname in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mendoza parses inside a full name →