Caro

surname · Latin script

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Caro is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country. In Spanish, recorded as dear (loved).

rarermore common
  • CLChile≈1 in 1K(inferred from the name graph)
  • COColombia≈1 in 1.1K
  • ARArgentina1 in 2.1K

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)

≈46,000 people, est.

Sources
327 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Chile, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from a medieval Italian and Spanish nickname for a beloved person, from Italian and Spanish caro ‘dear’

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.

How Caro is read(measured from records)

Caro 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.

  • Spanish74%

    dear (loved)

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

  • English14%

    from a medieval Italian and Spanish nickname for a beloved person, from Italian and Spanish caro ‘dear’

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    From Carraw (Northumberland) or Carrow (Norfolk, Nottinghamshire); first attested Robert de Carov 1159 P (Yorkshire).

    as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Caro 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 Caro is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CO Colombia#172≈46,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K20Caro143
AR Argentina#28921,8041 in 2.1K22KCaro95
ES Spain#21621,0401 in 2.4K21KCaro173
CL Chile#165≈17,000 est.≈1 in 1K1Caro123
PH Philippines—≈13,000 est.≈1 in 8.3K—Caro52
PE Peru#595≈7,500 est.≈1 in 4.3K—Caro82

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); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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)

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

  • English surname48 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, Spanish, German

    Also written Caero, Caroe, Carö, Cäro, Carô

  • French surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Philippines, Belgium

    Also written Caro'

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Çaro

  • Thai surname44 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Thailand, Laos, Chile, United States

    Languages: Thai, Lao

    Also written คาร์โก้, Cargo, Cago, คาโร, Kàkò

  • Swedish surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Denmark, Peru

    Languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian

    Also written Cärö, Cáró

69 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)

Caro is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • dear

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In Italian, do latim carus, nome afetivo medieval; patronímico do fundador familiar

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • In Italian, dear, beloved (L earns). Vars.: It.: Cari; Li Cari (S Italy). Dims.: It.: Carello, Carelli; Carillo (S Italy); Caretti, Carino, Carini; Carucci(o), Carrocci; Carricchio (S Italy); Carollo, Carullo, Carulli (S Italy); Carotti. Augs.: It.: Caroni, Carone. Sp.: Carazo. Patrs.: It.: De Caro, Di Caro (S Italy).

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

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)

1400160018002000Yosef Karo, b. 1488Heinrich Caro, b. 1834Nikodem Caro, b. 1871Anthony Caro, b. 1924Robert A. Caro, b. 1935Rafael Caro Quintero, b. 1952Marc Caro, b. 1956Niki Caro, b. 1967Isabelle Caro, b. 1982Manolo Caro, b. 1984

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 59 sources across 27 countries.

Official registers attesting Caro
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—22K—
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—21K#257
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—21K#257
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—20#96

Reference works 7

  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • 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)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

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 Caro come from?
from a medieval Italian and Spanish nickname for a beloved person, from Italian and Spanish caro ‘dear’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
What does the name Caro mean?
In Spanish, dear (loved)
What are other forms of the name Caro?
In the etymology graph, Cariño is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Caro have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 46 thousand people named Caro in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled caro.
How common is the name Caro?
In Argentina, the national register counted 21,804 people named Caro, about 1 in 2.1 thousand residents.
How common is Caro compared with other names?
In Colombia, Caro is the 172nd most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Caro?

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

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, “Caro” — the 172nd most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Caro parses inside a full name →