Nieto

surname · Latin script

Meaning: nickname for someone descended from a prominent elder in a community or one whose memory was respected, from Spanish nieto ‘grandson’ (Latin nepos, genitive nep(o)tis, ‘grandson’, ‘nephew’)

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

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

Nieto is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 67th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ESSpain1 in 831(measured from records)
  • COColombia≈1 in 1.1K
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 1.3K

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.

Spain (measured from records)

60,185 people

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
372 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 831 (inferred from the name graph)

Spain

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

NietoLatin(measured from records)
НьетоCyrillic(measured from records)
ΝιετοGreek(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)

nickname for someone descended from a prominent elder in a community or one whose memory was respected, from Spanish nieto ‘grandson’ (Latin nepos, genitive nep(o)tis, ‘grandson’, ‘nephew’).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Nieto 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 Nieto is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain#6760,1851 in 83160KNieto210
CO Colombia#152≈44,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K18Nieto159
AR Argentina#19533,9921 in 1.3K34KNieto118
US United States—25,7011 in 13K26KNieto372
CN China—≈25,000 est.≈1 in 56K—Nieto13
EC Ecuador#22112,6551 in 1.3K13KNieto70
SV El Salvador#208≈5,000 est.≈1 in 1.3K—Nieto40
UY Uruguay—2,8351 in 1.2K2.8K—50

60,185 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names; 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Nieto is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname9 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Ñieto, Nïetö, Nîeto, Ňîěțő

  • Lao surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, United States, Spain, Peru

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written N'Ieto

  • Indonesian surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, United States, Indonesia, Peru

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Ñieto, Niëtö

  • Serbian surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Spain, United States, Croatia

    Languages: Serbian, Bulgarian, Croatian

    Also written Нието

54 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)

Nieto is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Spanish, prominent elder in a community, or one whose memory was respected, from Sp. nieto grandson (LL neptus, for class. L nepos, gen. nep(6)tis, grandson, nephew; cf. Neveu). Nietschmann see Nicholas

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

  • In Spanish, grandchild; grandson

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

  • neto; España, Amsterdam, Roma, Venezia, Ciudad de Mexico, London, Livorno, Pisa, San Francisco

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In cbk, grandson

    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)

1700180019002000Vicente Nieto, b. 1769José Nieto, b. 1903José García Nieto, b. 1914José Nieto, b. 1942Ángel Nieto, b. 1947Antonio Jesús López Nieto, b. 1958José Corbacho, b. 1965Enrique Peña Nieto, b. 1966Pepón Nieto, b. 1967Marta Nieto, b. 1982

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

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 42 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Nieto
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—60K#70
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—60K#70
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—34K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201026K#1,376
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202025K#1,377
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200019K#1,744
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202413K#338
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—13K—
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—2.8K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)1995225—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2008211—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)1966208—

Reference works 7

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 Nieto mean, and where does it come from?
nickname for someone descended from a prominent elder in a community or one whose memory was respected, from Spanish nieto ‘grandson’ (Latin nepos, genitive nep(o)tis, ‘grandson’, ‘nephew’). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Nieto?
A machine transcription gives /njeto/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Nieto have the most bearers?
In Spain, the national register counted about 60 thousand people named Nieto, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nieto.
Where is Nieto most common?
Nieto is densest in Spain, where the national register counts about 1 in 831 people carrying it.
How common is the name Nieto?
In Spain, the national register counted 60,185 people named Nieto, about 1 in 831 residents.
How common is Nieto compared with other names?
In Spain, Nieto is the 67th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Nieto?

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

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, “Nieto” — the 67th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Nieto parses inside a full name →