Bonilla

surname · Latin script

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

Bonilla is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country. In Honduras it is the 20th most common surname. Recorded meaning: folk etymology, from any one of three places in Normandy called Bonneville, from OF bonne (fern.).

rarermore common
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 188(measured from records)
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 196
  • HNHonduras≈1 in 229

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)

≈54,000 people, est.

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
417 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 188 (inferred from the name graph)

Costa Rica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

BonillaLatin(measured from records)
БонильяCyrillic(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)

Derivation of Bonilla: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Bonilla
  1. OFbonnefern.(measured from records)
  2. LLbalnella(measured from records)

folk etymology, from any one of three places in Normandy called Bonneville, from OF bonne (fern.) good (see Bon) + ville settlement (see Ville). inces of Avila and Cuenca, so called from LL balnella, pi. of balnellum, a dim. of class. L balneum bath (cf. Bain 4). Var.: Bondfield.

Sources 1

  • A dictionary of surnames

Where in the world(measured from records)

Bonilla 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 Bonilla is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CO Colombia#128≈54,000 est.≈1 in 90937Bonilla174
US United States—51,4751 in 6.5K54KBonilla417
HN Honduras#20≈40,000 est.≈1 in 229—Bonilla72
SV El Salvador#42≈33,000 est.≈1 in 19635KBonilla72
EC Ecuador#7929,8731 in 56630KBonilla78
CR Costa Rica#4727,1381 in 18827KBonilla123
UY Uruguay—9,8001 in 3469.8K—62

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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); the co-datosgov-candidates register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; 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)

Bonilla is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname17 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Bonillä, Bonîlla, Bönïllä, Bönilla, Bonïlla

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Bonìlla

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Spain, Philippines

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Bönîllą

  • Italian surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Italy, Spain, Peru

    Also written Bönïllä

  • Croatian surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Philippines, Croatia

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Serbian

    Also written Бонила

  • Estonian surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Philippines, Peru

    Languages: Estonian, Finnish

    Also written Bönïllä, Bönillä, Bönillå

48 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)

Bonilla 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, inces of Avila and Cuenca, so called from LL balnella, pi. of balnellum, a dim. of class. L balneum bath (cf. Bain 4). Bones see Bunin

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

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)

1850190019502000Policarpo Bonilla, b. 1858Augusto Monterroso, b. 1921Socorro Bonilla, b. 1943Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, b. 1946Hugo Martínez, b. 1968Noel Valladares, b. 1977Gaby Moreno, b. 1981E.J. Bonilla, b. 1988Cristian Bonilla, b. 1993Jhon Lucumí, b. 1998

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).

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 34 sources across 22 countries.

Official registers attesting Bonilla
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202054K#602
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201051K#664
SV El SalvadorEl Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived)—35K#42
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200035K#908
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202430K#142
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—30K—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—27K#77
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—9.8K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)1995589—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2010558—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)1998557—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)2009537—

Reference works 4

  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)

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 Bonilla come from?
folk etymology, from any one of three places in Normandy called Bonneville, from OF bonne (fern.) good (see Bon) + ville settlement (see Ville). Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
What does the name Bonilla mean?
Recorded meaning: folk etymology, from any one of three places in Normandy called Bonneville, from OF bonne (fern.)
In which country does Bonilla have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 54 thousand people named Bonilla in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bonilla.
Where is Bonilla most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bonilla is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 188 people — even though Colombia holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Bonilla?
In the United States, the national register counted 51,475 people named Bonilla in 2010, about 1 in 6.5 thousand residents.
How common is Bonilla compared with other names?
In Colombia, Bonilla is the 128th most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Bonilla?

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

The same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.

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, “Bonilla” — the 128th most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Bonilla parses inside a full name →