Sousa
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from Sousa, a Portuguese place name perhaps meaning 'salt-marsh'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/sowzɐ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sousa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country. In Brazil it is the 3rd most common surname.
- PTPortugal≈1 in 101(inferred from the name graph)
- AOAngola≈1 in 786
- ARArgentina1 in 178as Sosa
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Sousa itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Argentina (measured from records)
- #36 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 427 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 101 (inferred from the name graph)
256,043 named Sosa
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Portugal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Souza in BR Brazil, US United States and Silva in EC Ecuador.
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 Sousa, a Portuguese place name perhaps meaning 'salt-marsh'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Sousa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | — | 256,043as Sosa | 1 in 178 | 256K | Sousa | 76 |
| US United States | — | 161,633as Silva | 1 in 2.1K | 163K | Souza | 427 |
| PT Portugal | #6 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 101 | listed | Sousa | 212 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 75,135as Sosa | 1 in 45 | 75K | Sousa | 32 |
| ES Spain | #384 | 48,968as Silva | 1 in 1K | 49K | Sousa | 135 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 47,379as Silva | 1 in 357 | 47K | Silva | 22 |
| AO Angola | #14 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 786 | 4 | Sousa | 66 |
| BR Brazil | #3 | 3,877as Sosa | 1 in 55K | 224K | Souza | 310 |
256,043 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national), counting the spelling sosa. 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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); INEC — civil registry names; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Sousa is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Portuguese, lived on the bank of a river, from Cat. so below, hard by (L sub) + ribas banks (L ripae). minor places so called. The placename is of uncertain ori¬ gin; it was probably applied originally to a salt-marsh, a var. of sausa (fern.) salty (L salsa), with the word agua water (L aqua) understood. Var.: Sorribes (the name of two places in the province of Lerida).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In Portuguese, minor places so called. The placename is of uncertain origin; it was probably applied originally to a salt-marsh, a var. of sausa (fern.) salty (L salsa), with the word agua water (L aqua) understood. Vars.: Souza (also a Sefardic name); De Souza, D’Souza.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In Portuguese, Sousa (a river in northern Portugal)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
rocks; origin from rocks
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In English, John Philip, US composer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 44 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 4.8M | #11 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,300 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 15K | #2,370 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,339 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 6.2K | #881 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 6.2K | #881 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 1K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 260 | — |
| AO Angola | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 4 | #39 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2021 | 1 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- 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 Sousa mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Sousa, a Portuguese place name perhaps meaning 'salt-marsh'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Sousa?
- A machine transcription gives /sowzɐ/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
- In which country does Sousa have the most bearers?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 256 thousand people named Sosa, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Sousa?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 256,043 people named Sosa, about 1 in 178 residents.
- How common is Sousa compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Sousa is the 3rd most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sousa?
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/sousaThe 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, “Sousa” — the 3rd most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.