López
surname · Latin script
Meaning: a surname originating as a patronymic
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/lopeθ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
López is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common surname.
- NINicaragua≈1 in 28(inferred from the name graph)
- UYUruguay1 in 37
- HNHonduras≈1 in 42
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #25 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 587 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 28 (inferred from the name graph)
874,523 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nicaragua, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Lopez in US United States, AR Argentina, ES Spain and 4 more.
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 surname originating as a patronymic
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
López 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #15 | 874,523 | 1 in 380 | 879K | Lopez | 587 |
| ES Spain | #2 | 871,380 | 1 in 57 | 871K | Lopez | 332 |
| CO Colombia | #3 | ≈560,000 est. | ≈1 in 88 | 6.2K | Lopez | 246 |
| AR Argentina | #4 | 520,897 | 1 in 87 | 521K | Lopez | 206 |
| GT Guatemala | #16 | ≈390,000 est. | ≈1 in 44 | — | López | 134 |
| NI Nicaragua | #1 | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 28 | 801 | Lopez | 106 |
| HN Honduras | #2 | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 42 | — | Lopez | 115 |
| SV El Salvador | #3 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 47 | — | Lopez | 129 |
| UY Uruguay | #172 | 92,326 | 1 in 37 | 92K | López | 129 |
874,523 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RNEC — Nombres más registrados (newborn name statistics); This page contains a database of popular Nicaraguan names and surnames categorized by gender and frequency, published by; 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Ruy López de Segurab. 1530ESSpanish priest and chess player
- Antonio López de Santa Annab. 1794MXMexican politician and military leader (1794-1876)
- Juan Negrínb. 1892ESnot in their usual namePrime Minister of Spain (1892-1956)
- Adolfo López Mateosb. 1910MX55th President of Mexico
- José María Aznarb. 1953ESnot in their usual namePrime Minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004
- Lopez Obradorb. 1953MXMexican politician. President of Mexico from 2018 to 2024
- Carlos Marchenab. 1979ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer
- Teresa Ruizb. 1988MXnot in their usual nameMexican actress
- Pedrib. 2002ESnot in their usual nameSpanish association football player
- Fermín Lópezb. 2003ESSpanish association football player
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 23 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO Colombia | RNEC — Nombres más registrados (newborn name statistics) | 2019 | 6.2K | #6 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 23 | #93 |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 López mean, and where does it come from?
- a surname originating as a patronymic Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name López?
- In the etymology graph, Lopes is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce López?
- A machine transcription gives /lopeθ/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does López have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 875 thousand people named López, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lopez.
- How common is the name López?
- In the United States, the national register counted 874,523 people named López in 2010, about 1 in 380 residents.
- How common is López compared with other names?
- In the United States, López is the 15th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about López?
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/l%C3%B3pezThe 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, “López” — the 15th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.