Zarate
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: from a place in the province of Alava, so called from the elements zara (oak) wood + ate pass, defile
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/saratɛ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zarate is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country. In Paraguay it is the 83rd most common surname.
- PYParaguay≈1 in 435(inferred from the name graph)
- ARArgentina1 in 793
- PEPeru≈1 in 1.4K
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)
- #991 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 349 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 435 (inferred from the name graph)
57,359 people
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Paraguay, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Zárate in CR Costa Rica, BO Bolivia.
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 a place in the province of Alava, so called from the elements zara (oak) wood + ate pass, defile.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
How Zarate is read(measured from records)
Zarate 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.
- Spanish87%
from a place in the province of Alava, so called from the elements zara (oak) wood + ate pass, defile.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
- English7.6%
A surname from Spanish [in turn from Basque].
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Zarate 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 | #122 | 57,359 | 1 in 793 | 57K | Zarate | 111 |
| PE Peru | #191 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Zarate | 93 |
| US United States | — | 20,992 | 1 in 16K | 21K | Zarate | 349 |
| PY Paraguay | #83 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 435 | — | Zarate | 50 |
| CO Colombia | #395 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.2K | 14 | Zarate | 115 |
| BO Bolivia | #608 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 992 | — | Zárate | 45 |
| CR Costa Rica | #893 | 2,721 | 1 in 1.9K | 2.7K | Zárate | 51 |
57,359 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); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; the co-datosgov-candidates register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) 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)
Zarate 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.
Curaçao
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
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)
- Mikel Zarate Lejarragab. 1933ESBasque writer
- Oscar Zarateb. 1942ARArgentine comics artist
- Abel Zarateb. 1952PHFilipino musician
- Geneviève Zarateb. 1953FRFrench university professor
- Néstor Morab. 1963COnot in their usual nameColombian racing cyclist
- Julio Zarateb. 1975MXboxer
- Diego Gavilánb. 1980PYnot in their usual nameParaguayan footballer
- Robert Zarateb. 1987VEVenezuelan baseball player
- Ernie ZaratePHactor
- Juan ZarateUSAmerican attorney, security advisor and corporate board member; former deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism; director at Northwestern Mutual
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 28 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 57K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 21K | #1,713 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 20K | #1,735 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,371 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 2.7K | #320 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 14 | #102 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Zarate mean, and where does it come from?
- from a place in the province of Alava, so called from the elements zara (oak) wood + ate pass, defile. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Zarate?
- A machine transcription gives /saratɛ/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Zarate have the most bearers?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 57 thousand people named Zarate, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zarate.
- How common is the name Zarate?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 57,359 people named Zarate, about 1 in 793 residents.
- How common is Zarate compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Zarate is the 122nd most common surname of 398,256 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Zarate?
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/zarateThe 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, “Zarate” — the 122nd most common surname in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.