Motã

surname · Latin script

Motã is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. Recorded meaning: habitational name from places in the provinces of Cuenca and Valladolid named Mota. 3, Catalan: topographic name from mota ‘hillock’, denoting someone who lived by a hillock.

rarermore common
  • BRBrazil1 in 415(measured from records)
  • ESSpain1 in 5.9K
  • UYUruguay1 in 7.2K

carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Brazil (measured from records)

510,309 people

Sources
28 (measured from records)

Reference-verified

1 in 415 (inferred from the name graph)

Brazil

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Mota in US United States, ES Spain.

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)

habitational name from places in the provinces of Cuenca and Valladolid named Mota. 3, Catalan: topographic name from mota ‘hillock’, denoting someone who lived by a hillock.

Sources 2

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Trask, Etymological Dictionary of Basque (2008 posthumous draft)

Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Motã 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 Motã is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil510,3091 in 415510K——
US United States14,1821 in 23K14KMota28
ES Spain8,4341 in 5.9K8.4KMota5
AR Argentina1,0021 in 45K1K——
CH Switzerland7541 in 11K754—1
UY Uruguay4691 in 7.2K469——

510,309 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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 — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); 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).

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Motã under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Motã mean, and where does it come from?
habitational name from places in the provinces of Cuenca and Valladolid named Mota. 3, Catalan: topographic name from mota ‘hillock’, denoting someone who lived by a hillock. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names and Trask, Etymological Dictionary of Basque (2008 posthumous draft).
In which country does Motã have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 510 thousand people named Motã, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Motã most common?
Motã is densest in Brazil, where the national register counts about 1 in 415 people carrying it.
How common is the name Motã?
In Brazil, the national register counted 510,309 people named Motã, about 1 in 415 residents.

What do you want to know about Motã?

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Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/mot%C3%A3

The same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use; a free API key gives 1,000 requests a day, and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Motã”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Motã parses inside a full name →