Montoya

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: unexplained. This is a frequent name in Spain

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

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

Montoya is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Colombia it is the 42nd most common surname.

rarermore common
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 308(measured from records)
  • HNHonduras≈1 in 441
  • COColombia≈1 in 482

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.

China (inferred from the name graph)

≈110,000 people, est.

#810 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
432 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 308 (inferred from the name graph)

Costa Rica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MontoyaLatin(measured from records)
МонтойяCyrillic(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)

unexplained. This is a frequent name in Spain.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

How Montoya is read(measured from records)

Montoya 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.

  • Spanish68%

    unexplained. This is a frequent name in Spain.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • English20%

    A surname from Spanish [in turn from Basque].

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

    Carlos, Spanish guitarist

    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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Montoya 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 Montoya is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CN China—≈110,000 est.≈1 in 13K—Montoya12
CO Colombia#42≈100,000 est.≈1 in 48276Montoya191
US United States—71,8441 in 4.6K72KMontoya432
ES Spain#18728,2781 in 1.8K28KMontoya176
PE Peru#171≈27,000 est.≈1 in 1.2K—Montoya113
HN Honduras#50≈21,000 est.≈1 in 441—Montoya64
EC Ecuador—17,8441 in 94718KMontoya52
CR Costa Rica#8116,5281 in 30817KMontoya93
SV El Salvador#155≈6,900 est.≈1 in 935—Montoya61

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; the co-datosgov-candidates register; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; 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)

Montoya is also recorded as 3 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 Möntöyä, Möntoya, Montoyà, Möntöÿä, Möntöyą

  • Portuguese surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, United States, Peru, Spain

    Also written Möntoyä, Montöya, Môntôyâ, Möntöyä, M̶o̶n̶t̶o̶y̶a̶

  • Swedish surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Peru, Spain, Denmark

    Languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Möńtöyä

67 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

18501900195020002050Ramón Montoya, b. 1879Joseph Montoya, b. 1915Telmo Zarra, b. 1921Juan Pablo Montoya, b. 1975Alba Molina, b. 1978Adam Montoya, b. 1984Sergio Henao, b. 1987Martín Montoya, b. 1991Richard Ríos, b. 2000Sebastián Montoya, b. 2005

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

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 42 sources across 23 countries.

Official registers attesting Montoya
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201072K#459
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202071K#457
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200057K#526
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—28K#178
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—28K#178
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202418K#241
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—18K—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—17K#120
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)1995455—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2008338—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2007338—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2011325—

Reference works 6

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 Montoya mean, and where does it come from?
unexplained. This is a frequent name in Spain. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Montoya?
A machine transcription gives /montoɟ͡ʝa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Montoya have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 108 thousand people named Montoya in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled montoya.
Where is Montoya most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Montoya is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 308 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Montoya?
In the United States, the national register counted 71,844 people named Montoya in 2010, about 1 in 4.6 thousand residents.
How common is Montoya compared with other names?
In Colombia, Montoya is the 42nd most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Montoya?

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

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, “Montoya” — the 42nd most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Montoya parses inside a full name →