Lara
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Lara is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Honduras it is the 42nd most common surname. Recorded meaning: Modern given name used in several languages; from Latin Lara, a mythological name, or as short form of Laura.
- HNHonduras≈1 in 356(inferred from the name graph)
- ECEcuador1 in 496
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 521
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)
- #481 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 444 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 356 (inferred from the name graph)
83,067 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Honduras, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
Modern given name used in several languages; from Latin Lara, a mythological name, or as short form of Laura.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 24 languages in the etymology graph.
How Lara is read(measured from records)
Lara 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.
- Spanish69%
habitational name from a place named Lara de los Infantes in Burgos province.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- English15%
Person from Lara de los Infantes, in Burgos province, Spain.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
I. mother of the Lares by Mercury
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Lara 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 | — | 83,067 | 1 in 4K | 83K | Lara | 444 |
| BR Brazil | #232 | ≈52,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | 281K | Lara | 193 |
| VE Venezuela | #115 | ≈47,000 est. | ≈1 in 615 | — | Lara | 88 |
| ES Spain | #101 | 43,226 | 1 in 1.2K | 43K | Lara | 205 |
| CO Colombia | #200 | ≈38,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Lara | 167 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 34,115 | 1 in 496 | 34K | Lara | 87 |
| HN Honduras | #42 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 356 | — | Lara | 67 |
| SV El Salvador | #89 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 521 | — | Lara | 58 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 8,443 | 1 in 604 | 8.4K | — | 89 |
83,067 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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); 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); INEC — civil registry names; 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)
Lara 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.
In French, Modern given name used in several languages; from Latin Lara, a mythological name, or as short form of Laura.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In Swedish, Lara kan vara av ryskt ursprung, en kortform till → Larissa eller → Laura. Genom en gestalt i boken Doktor Zjivago, av Boris Pasternak 1957 (och filmatiserad 1965), började namnet användas i stora delar av Europa och Nordamerika. Datorspelet och filmerna Tomb Raider med Lara Croft som huvudperson (från 2001) har gjort namnet ännu mer populärt. Lara används även i Mellanöstern.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, Origine grecque, signifie « mouette ».
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
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)
- Agustin Larab. 1897MXMexican composer and interpreter of songs and boleros (1897–1970)
- Juan Carreñob. 1909MXnot in their usual nameMexican footballer (1909–1940)
- Guillermo Rodríguezb. 1923ECnot in their usual namePresident of Ecuador (1972 - 1976)
- Rodrigo Lara Bonillab. 1946COColombian lawyer and politician (1946–1984)
- Juan Jesús Vivasb. 1953ESnot in their usual nameMayor of Ceuta
- Joe Larab. 1962USAmerican actor (1962–2021)
- Vickie Guerrerob. 1968USnot in their usual nameAmerican professional wrestling manager
- Daniel García Larab. 1974ESSpanish footballer
- Alexandra Maria Larab. 1978ROGerman actress
- Fernando San Emeteriob. 1984ESnot in their usual nameSpanish basketball player (born 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 146 sources across 69 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 83K | #374 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 83K | #381 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 60K | #501 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 43K | #109 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 43K | #109 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 34K | #107 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 8.4K | #188 |
Reference works 9
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- 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
- In which country does Lara have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 83 thousand people named Lara, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lara.
- What does the name Lara mean, and where does it come from?
- Modern given name used in several languages; from Latin Lara, a mythological name, or as short form of Laura. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- How common is the name Lara?
- In the United States, the national register counted 83,067 people named Lara in 2010, about 1 in 4.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Lara compared with other names?
- In Honduras, Lara is the 42nd most common surname of 30,461 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lara?
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/laraThe 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, “Lara” — the 42nd most common surname in Honduras. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.