Palma
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: palm of the hand
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/palma/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Palma is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country. In Honduras it is the 58th most common surname.
- ECEcuador1 in 460(measured from records)
- HNHonduras≈1 in 468
- CLChile≈1 in 656
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 343 (measured from records)
- 1 in 460 (inferred from the name graph)
≈58,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Alternative form of palmo, traditional Portuguese and Spanish units of length.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Palma is read(measured from records)
Palma is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- Spanish65%
palm of the hand
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Del latín palma: ‘palma de la mano’; luego ‘palmera’ y ‘victoria’.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
- English15%
Alternative form of palmo, traditional Portuguese and Spanish units of length.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Portuguese6.2%
palm (inner part of the hand)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Palma 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | #234 | ≈58,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Palma | 98 |
| EC Ecuador | #77 | 36,716 | 1 in 460 | 37K | Palma | 57 |
| BR Brazil | — | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | 154 | — | 5 |
| CL Chile | #81 | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 656 | — | Palma | 147 |
| VE Venezuela | #193 | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Palma | 70 |
| HN Honduras | #58 | ≈20,000 est. | ≈1 in 468 | — | Palma | 63 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 5,813 | 1 in 877 | 5.8K | — | 70 |
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: INEC — civil registry names; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; IBGE — Nomes (census name API). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Palma 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.
In Italian, do nome próprio Palma; patronímico ou matronímico
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
Palmera
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
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)
- Ricardo Palmab. 1833PEPeruvian historian (1833-1919)
- Tomás Estrada Palmab. 1835CUCuban politician (1835–1908); President of Cuba (1902–1906)
- Arturo Alessandrib. 1868CLnot in their usual nameChilean politician and President (1868–1950)
- Adelino da Palma Carlosb. 1905PTPortuguese politician (1905-1992)
- Miriam Defensor Santiagob. 1945PHnot in their usual nameFilipina politician, lawyer, and author (1945–2016)
- Leonor Varelab. 1972CLnot in their usual nameChilean actress
- Emilio Palmab. 1978ARfirst person born on the Antarctic mainland
- Alan Franco Palmab. 1998ECEcuadoran association football player
- Luis Palmab. 2000HNHonduran association football player
- Renato Veigab. 2003PTnot in their usual namePortuguese footballer (born 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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 88 sources across 39 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 37K | #101 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 5.8K | #229 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 398 | — |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Palma come from?
- Alternative form of palmo, traditional Portuguese and Spanish units of length. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Palma have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 58 thousand people named Palma in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled palma.
- Where is Palma most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Palma is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 460 people — even though Philippines holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce Palma?
- A machine transcription gives /palma/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Palma mean?
- In Spanish, palm of the hand
- How common is the name Palma?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 36,716 people named Palma in 2024, about 1 in 460 residents.
- How common is Palma compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Palma is the 234th most common surname of 876,464 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Palma?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/palmaThe 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, “Palma” — the 234th most common surname in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.