Novoa

surname · Latin script

Meaning: habitational name from the former Galician juridical district Terra de Novoa, in Ourense province

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

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

Novoa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • CLChile≈1 in 2.4K(inferred from the name graph)
  • NINicaragua≈1 in 2.9K
  • COColombia≈1 in 3.6K

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.

Colombia (inferred from the name graph)

≈14,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
283 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 2.4K (inferred from the name graph)

Chile, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

NovoaLatin(measured from records)
НовоаCyrillic(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)

habitational name from the former Galician juridical district Terra de Novoa, in Ourense province.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Novoa 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 Novoa is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CO Colombia#371≈14,000 est.≈1 in 3.6K20Novoa111
ES Spain#7587,8011 in 6.4K7.8KNovoa142
CL Chile#317≈7,600 est.≈1 in 2.4K—Novoa105
PE Peru#646≈7,300 est.≈1 in 4.4K—Novoa81
AR Argentina#7914,4641 in 10K4.5KNovoa76
NI Nicaragua#273≈2,100 est.≈1 in 2.9K—Novoa22
CR Costa Rica—1,4731 in 3.5K1.5K—29

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); 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. 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)

Novoa is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname8 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Nóvoa, Növôä, Növöä

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Nóvoa

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Novôa, Novóa, Nôvoa, Nóvoa

  • Italian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Spain, Peru

    Also written Nóvoa

  • Hungarian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Hungary, Peru, Spain, United States

    Also written Nóvoa, Nóvóá

  • Croatian surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, United States, Peru

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Nóvoa

33 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)

19401960198020002020Rodolfo Nin Novoa, b. 1948José Ramón Novoa, b. 1950Laura Novoa, b. 1970Pedro Novoa, b. 1974Matías Novoa, b. 1980Oswaldo Novoa, b. 1982Joaquín Novoa, b. 1983Enio Novoa, b. 1986Hugo Novoa, b. 2003

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

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 27 sources across 16 countries.

Official registers attesting Novoa
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—7.8K#708
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—7.8K#708
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—4.5K—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—1.5K#406
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—20#96
CR Costa RicaTSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration)———

Reference works 4

  • 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)

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 Novoa mean, and where does it come from?
habitational name from the former Galician juridical district Terra de Novoa, in Ourense province. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Novoa?
A machine transcription gives /noβoa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Novoa have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 14 thousand people named Novoa in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled novoa.
How common is the name Novoa?
In Spain, the national register counted 7,801 people named Novoa, about 1 in 6.4 thousand residents.
How common is Novoa compared with other names?
In Colombia, Novoa is the 371st most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Novoa?

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

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, “Novoa” — the 371st most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Novoa parses inside a full name →