Prieto

surname · Latin script

Meaning: apretar to squeeze, compress, a metathesized form of apetrar, LL appectorare to hold close to the chest (from pec¬ tus, gen .pectoris, chest))

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

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

Prieto is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 60th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • PYParaguay≈1 in 565(inferred from the name graph)
  • ESSpain1 in 688
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 1.1K

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)

72,655 people

4 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
385 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 565 (inferred from the name graph)

Paraguay, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

PrietoLatin(measured from records)
ПриетоCyrillic(measured from records)
ปรีเอโตThai(measured from records)
프리에토Hangul(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)

apretar to squeeze, compress, a metathesized form of apetrar, LL appectorare to hold close to the chest (from pec¬ tus, gen .pectoris, chest)). The use as a colour term seems to have derived originally from its application to rainclouds and fog. Cogn.: Port.: Preto.

Sources 1

  • A dictionary of surnames

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Prieto 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 Prieto is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain#6072,6551 in 68873KPrieto223
CO Colombia#147≈43,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K37Prieto163
VE Venezuela#198≈26,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K—Prieto82
AR Argentina#24923,4151 in 1.9K23KPrieto118
US United States—19,5201 in 17K20KPrieto385
PY Paraguay#111≈13,000 est.≈1 in 565—Prieto50
UY Uruguay—5,9961 in 5656K—60

72,655 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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the co-datosgov-candidates register; 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)

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

  • English surname7 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Prîëtö, Priéto

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, United States, Philippines

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Priéto, Prièto, Prìetõ

  • Portuguese surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil, Spain, Paraguay, United States

    Also written Priéto

  • Croatian surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, United States, Philippines, Peru

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian

    Also written Прието

53 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)

Prieto is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Spanish, Pritchatt see Pryke skinned man, from OSp. prieto dark, black (from the Pritty see Pretty verb apretar to squeeze, compress, a metathesized form of apetrar, LL appectorare to hold close to the chest

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

  • In Spanish, dark, swarthy (used to describe both people and landscapes)

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

  • In Asturian, neuter of prietu

    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)

1700180019002000José Joaquín Prieto, b. 1786Indalecio Prieto, b. 1883Conrado San Martin, b. 1921Antonio Prieto, b. 1926Rodrigo Prieto, b. 1965Maricarmen Alva, b. 1967Luis Prieto, b. 1970Roberto Fresnedoso, b. 1973Xabi Prieto, b. 1983Derik Osede, b. 1993

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

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 38 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Prieto
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—73K#56
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—73K#56
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—23K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202020K#1,791
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201020K#1,833
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200015K#2,259
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—6K—
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—37#79
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 4

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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 Prieto mean, and where does it come from?
apretar to squeeze, compress, a metathesized form of apetrar, LL appectorare to hold close to the chest (from pec¬ tus, gen .pectoris, chest)). Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
How do you pronounce Prieto?
A machine transcription gives /pɾjeto/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Prieto have the most bearers?
In Spain, the national register counted about 73 thousand people named Prieto, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled prieto.
How common is the name Prieto?
In Spain, the national register counted 72,655 people named Prieto, about 1 in 688 residents.
How common is Prieto compared with other names?
In Spain, Prieto is the 60th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Prieto?

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

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, “Prieto” — the 60th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Prieto parses inside a full name →