Fernandez
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Fernandez is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 6th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Spanish surname meaning ‘son of Ferdinand’.
- UYUruguay1 in 27(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 56
- CRCosta Rica1 in 81
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.
- Spain (measured from records)
- #73 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 535 (measured from records)
- 1 in 27 (inferred from the name graph)
896,725 people
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Fernández in CR Costa Rica.
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)
Spanish surname meaning ‘son of Ferdinand’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Fernandez 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | #6 | 896,725 | 1 in 56 | 897K | Fernandez | 324 |
| AR Argentina | #3 | 520,713 | 1 in 87 | 521K | Fernandez | 197 |
| PH Philippines | #10 | ≈290,000 est. | ≈1 in 372 | — | Fernandez | 181 |
| US United States | #109 | 180,842 | 1 in 1.8K | 185K | Fernandez | 535 |
| VE Venezuela | #20 | ≈180,000 est. | ≈1 in 160 | 1.3K | Fernandez | 120 |
| UY Uruguay | #3 | 123,866 | 1 in 27 | 124K | Fernandez | 131 |
| PY Paraguay | #9 | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 101 | — | Fernandez | 85 |
| CR Costa Rica | #246 | 62,807 | 1 in 81 | 63K | Fernández | 140 |
896,725 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); 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)
Fernandez is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, Spanish patronymic surname from Fernando.
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
In English, A patrilineal surname from Spanish.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, Spanischer Familienname zu Ferdinand; 687 Belege.
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In roa-opt, a surname originating as a patronymic
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)
- Alfonso VI of León and Castileb. 1040ESnot in their usual nameKing of León (1065 to 1109), of Castile (1072 to 1109), and of Galicia (1071 to 1109)
- Leonel Fernándezb. 1953DOformer president of the Dominican Republic
- Cristina Fernández de Kirchnerb. 1953ARpresident of Argentina from 2007 to 2015
- Alberto Fernándezb. 1959ARpresident of Argentina from 2019 to 2023
- Cote de Pablob. 1979CLnot in their usual nameChilean-American actress
- Iker Casillas Fernándezb. 1981ESSpanish association football player
- Javier Saviolab. 1981ARnot in their usual nameArgentine footballer
- Laura Fernández Delgadob. 1986CRPresident of Costa Rica since 2026
- Denís Suárezb. 1994ESnot in their usual nameSpanish association football player
- Enzo Fernándezb. 2001ARArgentine footballer (born 2001)
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 67 sources across 33 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 897K | #4 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 897K | #4 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 521K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 185K | #134 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 181K | #142 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 139K | #178 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 124K | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 63K | #24 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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
- What does the name Fernandez mean, and where does it come from?
- Spanish surname meaning ‘son of Ferdinand’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Fernandez have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 897 thousand people named Fernandez, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fernandez.
- Where is Fernandez most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Fernandez is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 27 people — even though Spain holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Fernandez?
- In Spain, the national register counted 896,725 people named Fernandez, about 1 in 56 residents.
- How common is Fernandez compared with other names?
- In Spain, Fernandez is the 6th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fernandez?
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/fernandezThe 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, “Fernandez” — the 6th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.