Ortega

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: various places, for example in the provinces of Burgos, La Coruna, and Jaen, of uncertain etymology. It may repre¬ sent an altered form of Sp

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

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

Ortega is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Ecuador it is the 27th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • ECEcuador1 in 291(measured from records)
  • PYParaguay≈1 in 404
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 413

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.

United States (measured from records)

127,256 people, 2010

#333 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
469 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 291 (inferred from the name graph)

Ecuador

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

OrtegaLatin(measured from records)
ОртегаCyrillic(measured from records)
ออร์เตกาThai(measured from records)
ΟρτεγαGreek(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 Ortega’, the name of various places in Spain.

Sources 1

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

How Ortega is read(measured from records)

Ortega 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.

  • Spanish71%

    various places, for example in the provinces of Burgos, La Coruna, and Jaen, of uncertain etymology. It may repre¬ sent an altered form of Sp. ortiga nettle (L urtica), or be from L hortus garden, orchard (cf. Ort i ) + the local suffix -eca. Ortiz see Fort

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

  • English15%

    ‘Person from Ortega’, the name of various places in Spain.

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

    Saavedra Daniel, president.

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

    Nicaragua

    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)

Ortega 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 Ortega is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#679127,2561 in 2.6K127KOrtega469
ES Spain#32118,7771 in 421119KOrtega249
CO Colombia#64≈110,000 est.≈1 in 43961Ortega183
PH Philippines#126≈76,000 est.≈1 in 1.4K—Ortega120
VE Venezuela#72≈69,000 est.≈1 in 413—Ortega102
EC Ecuador#2758,0361 in 29158KOrtega95
PY Paraguay#519≈18,000 est.≈1 in 404—Ortega55
CR Costa Rica—16,8701 in 30217K—95

127,256 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names; 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)

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

  • English surname25 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, Dutch

    Also written Ortéga, Örtega, Ortega', Órtega, Ortegá

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Ort-Ega, Órtega, Ortéga

  • Indonesian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Indonesia, United States, Spain

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Ortèga

  • Croatian surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, United States, Philippines, Peru

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Ортега

75 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)

Ortega is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • codorniz; quail; Ciudad de Mexico, Madrid

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

  • In Filipino, a common surname from Spanish, equivalent to Spanish Ortega, most concentrated in Metro Manila, Bulacan, Laguna, Cavite and Batangas

    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)

18501900195020002050José Ortega y Gasset, b. 1883Amancio Ortega, b. 1936Daniel Ortega, b. 1945Kenny Ortega, b. 1950Chick Ortega, b. 1961Ariel Ortega, b. 1974Albert Riera, b. 1982Carolina Yuste, b. 1991Stefan Ortega, b. 1992Jenna Ortega, b. 2002

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

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 53 sources across 28 countries.

Official registers attesting Ortega
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010127K#239
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020125K#243
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—119K#35
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—119K#35
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200093K#296
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202458K#55
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—58K—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—17K#117
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)19951.2K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20101K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)19981K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2024498—

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

Where does the name Ortega come from?
‘Person from Ortega’, the name of various places in Spain. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
How do you pronounce Ortega?
A machine transcription gives /orteɡa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What does the name Ortega mean?
In Spanish, various places, for example in the provinces of Burgos, La Coruna, and Jaen, of uncertain etymology. It may repre¬ sent an altered form of Sp.
In which country does Ortega have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 127 thousand people named Ortega, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ortega.
Where is Ortega most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ortega is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 291 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Ortega?
In the United States, the national register counted 127,256 people named Ortega in 2010, about 1 in 2.6 thousand residents.
How common is Ortega compared with other names?
In the United States, Ortega is the 679th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ortega?

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

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, “Ortega” — the 679th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ortega parses inside a full name →