Zabala
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ince of Biscay, so called from Basque zabal small square + the def
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/saβala/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zabala 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.
- 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)
- Sources
- 274 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.1K (inferred from the name graph)
26,118 people
Highest-authority source
Bolivia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
ince of Biscay, so called from Basque zabal small square + the def. art. -a. In some cases the surname may derive directly from the vocab. word.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zabala 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 | #243 | 26,118 | 1 in 1.7K | 26K | Zabala | 104 |
| PH Philippines | #477 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.3K | — | Zabala | 82 |
| CO Colombia | #385 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | 11 | Zabala | 100 |
| VE Venezuela | #344 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Zabala | 55 |
| BO Bolivia | #65 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Zabala | 56 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #173 | ≈5,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Zabala | 35 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 2,125 | 1 in 1.6K | 2.1K | — | 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Zabala is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Spanish, a surname from Basque, common on the Basque Country
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)
- Bruno Mauricio de Zabalab. 1682ESSpanish colonial administrator (1682-1736)
- Félix María de Samaniegob. 1745ESnot in their usual nameSpanish writer (1745-1801)
- Eduardo Zamacois Zabalab. 1841ESSpanish academic painter (1841-1871)
- Manuel Ignacio Galíndez Zabalab. 1892ESSpanish architect (1892-1980)
- Iris M. Zavalab. 1936USnot in their usual namePuerto Rican writer and poet
- Gaizka Mendietab. 1974ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer
- Anaitz Arbillab. 1987ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer
- Carlos Oquendob. 1987COnot in their usual nameColombian racing cyclist
- Gustavo Pinedob. 1988BOnot in their usual nameBolivian footballer
- Josu Zabala Lópezb. 1993EScyclist
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 32 sources across 20 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 26K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 2.1K | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 11 | #105 |
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
- Where does the name Zabala come from?
- ince of Biscay, so called from Basque zabal small square + the def. art. -a. In some cases the surname may derive directly from the vocab. word. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Zabala?
- A machine transcription gives /saβala/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Zabala mean?
- Recorded meaning: ince of Biscay, so called from Basque zabal small square + the def.
- In which country does Zabala have the most bearers?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 26 thousand people named Zabala, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zabala.
- How common is the name Zabala?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 26,118 people named Zabala, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Zabala compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Zabala is the 243rd most common surname of 398,256 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Zabala?
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/zabalaThe 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, “Zabala” — the 243rd most common surname in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.