Zapata

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: brake shoe

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

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

Zapata is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country, where it is the 46th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • COColombia≈1 in 394(inferred from the name graph)
  • PEPeru≈1 in 525
  • NINicaragua≈1 in 551

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.

Colombia (inferred from the name graph)

≈120,000 people, est.

#716 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
395 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 394 (inferred from the name graph)

Colombia, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ZapataLatin(measured from records)
СапатаCyrillic(measured from records)
ΖαπάταGreek(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)

A peninsula in southern Matanzas, Cuba.

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Zapata is read(measured from records)

Zapata is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • Spanish82%

    brake shoe

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

  • English9.6%

    A peninsula in southern Matanzas, Cuba.

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

    I. Emiliano, Mexican political

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

    leader; swamp, Cuba

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

    county, TX

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Zapata 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 Zapata is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CO Colombia#46≈120,000 est.≈1 in 39487Zapata207
PE Peru#70≈61,000 est.≈1 in 525—Zapata124
AR Argentina#14549,6601 in 91650KZapata110
VE Venezuela#146≈37,000 est.≈1 in 775—Zapata68
US United States—32,2741 in 10K33KZapata395
NI Nicaragua#74≈11,000 est.≈1 in 551—Zapata51
UY Uruguay—4,4191 in 7674.4K—47

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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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)

Zapata is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname10 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Zāpātā, Zäpätä, Zäpatä, Zãpatâ, Zäpâtä

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Peru, Spain

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Zäpätä

  • Lao surname18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Chile, Peru, United States

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Zäpätä, Zapàta, Zàpàtà, ซาพาทา, Zápàtá

  • Indonesian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Indonesia, Philippines, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Zäpâtå

  • Swedish surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Peru, Norway, Spain

    Languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Žãpåtā, Zäpätä

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)

Zapata 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 Basque, shoe

    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)

1850190019502000Emiliano Zapata, b. 1879Carmen Zapata, b. 1927Mia Zapata, b. 1965René Higuita, b. 1966Franky Zapata, b. 1978Maya Zapata, b. 1981Cristian Zapata, b. 1986Emiliano Insúa, b. 1989Duván Zapata, b. 1991Manuel Turizo, b. 2000

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

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 39 sources across 24 countries.

Official registers attesting Zapata
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—50K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202033K#1,055
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201032K#1,082
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200024K#1,361
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—4.4K—
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—87#34
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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 Zapata come from?
A peninsula in southern Matanzas, Cuba. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Zapata?
A machine transcription gives /θapata/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What does the name Zapata mean?
In Spanish, brake shoe
In which country does Zapata have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 125 thousand people named Zapata in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zapata.
How common is the name Zapata?
In Argentina, the national register counted 49,660 people named Zapata, about 1 in 916 residents.
How common is Zapata compared with other names?
In Colombia, Zapata is the 46th most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Zapata?

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

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, “Zapata” — the 46th most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Zapata parses inside a full name →