Valdes

surname · Latin script

Meaning: A surname from Asturian

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

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

Valdes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Panama it is the 6th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • CLChile≈1 in 907(inferred from the name graph)
  • PAPanama≈1 in 1K
  • ESSpain1 in 3.8K

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 Valdes 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.

United States (measured from records)

124,995 named Valdez, 2010

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
387 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 907 (inferred from the name graph)

Chile, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ValdesLatin(measured from records)
ВальдесCyrillic(measured from records)

2 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Valdez 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)

A surname from Asturian.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Valdes 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 Valdes is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—124,995as Valdez1 in 2.7K125KValdes387
AR Argentina#73972,185as Valdez1 in 63072KValdes77
CL Chile#66≈20,000 est.≈1 in 907—Valdes142
EC Ecuador—15,837as Valdez1 in 1.1K16KValdez24
ES Spain#28813,1321 in 3.8K13KValdes161
UY Uruguay—6,952as Valdez1 in 4877K—37
PA Panama#6≈3,700 est.≈1 in 1K57Valdes72

124,995 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010, counting the spelling valdez. 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; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Tribunal Electoral — Boletín, postulaciones for the 5 May 2024 general election; INEC — civil registry names; 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)

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

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Valdès, Valdês, Váldes, Valdés

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Spain, United States

    Also written Valdés

  • Sinhala surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Valdés

  • Estonian surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Estonia, Sweden

    Languages: Estonian, Finnish

    Also written Valdés, Valdeš

54 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)

Valdes 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 English, peninsula, Argentina

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

  • In French, Forme ibérique; sens incertain dans ce contexte.

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

  • In Swedish, past passive indicative of välja

    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)

1400160018002000Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, b. 1478Juan de Valdés, b. 1505Juan de Valdés Leal, b. 1622Armando Palacio Valdés, b. 1853Miguel Alemán Valdés, b. 1900Bebo Valdés, b. 1918David Valdes, b. 1950Víctor Valdés, b. 1982Carlos Valdés, b. 1985Carlos Valdez, b. 1989

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

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 48 sources across 29 countries.

Official registers attesting Valdes
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202022K#1,617
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201021K#1,745
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200016K#2,139
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—13K#415
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—13K#415
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—5.3K—
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—1.5K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—603—
PA PanamaTribunal Electoral — Boletín, postulaciones for the 5 May 2024 general election202413#252
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20245—
PA PanamaWikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names—1#729
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

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

What does the name Valdes mean, and where does it come from?
A surname from Asturian. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Valdes?
A machine transcription gives /baldɛs/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Valdes have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 125 thousand people named Valdez, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Valdes?
In Spain, the national register counted 13,132 people named Valdes, about 1 in 3.8 thousand residents.
How common is Valdes compared with other names?
In Panama, Valdes is the 6th most common surname of 39,844 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Valdes?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

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

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, “Valdes” — the 6th most common surname in Panama. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Valdes parses inside a full name →