Zábala

surname · Latin script

Zábala is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country. In Bolivia it is the 65th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Spanish, of Basque origin.

rarermore common
  • BOBolivia≈1 in 1.1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • ARArgentina1 in 1.7K
  • DODominican Republic≈1 in 1.9K

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.

Argentina (measured from records)

26,118 people

Sources
274 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)

Bolivia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Zabala in AR Argentina, VE Venezuela, PH Philippines and 3 more.

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)

From Spanish, of Basque origin.

Sources 2

  • The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
  • Wiktionary

Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Zábala 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 Zábala is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina#24326,1181 in 1.7K26KZabala104
PH Philippines#477≈21,000 est.≈1 in 5.3K—Zabala82
CO Colombia#385≈14,000 est.≈1 in 3.5K11Zabala100
VE Venezuela#344≈13,000 est.≈1 in 2.2K—Zabala55
BO Bolivia#65≈10,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K—Zabala56
DO Dominican Republic#173≈5,400 est.≈1 in 1.9K—Zabala35
UY Uruguay—2,1251 in 1.6K2.1K—37

26,118 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); 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)

Zábala is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Zabala

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.

Evidence(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Zábala under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Zábala mean, and where does it come from?
From Spanish, of Basque origin. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles and Wiktionary.
In which country does Zábala have the most bearers?
In Argentina, the national register counted about 26 thousand people named Zábala, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zabala.
How common is the name Zábala?
In Argentina, the national register counted 26,118 people named Zábala, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
How common is Zábala compared with other names?
In Argentina, Zábala is the 243rd most common surname of 398,256 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Zábala?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/z%C3%A1bala

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, “Zábala” — the 243rd most common surname in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Zábala parses inside a full name →