Mercedes

given name · Latin script

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

Mercedes is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 50th most common given name. In Spanish, recorded as from the Marian name Nuestra Sehora(oT Maria) de las Mercedes, from the plural of merced ‘grace’, ‘mercy’.

rarermore common
  • NINicaragua≈1 in 253(inferred from the name graph)
  • DODominican Republic≈1 in 293
  • ECEcuador1 in 319

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)

120,557 people

#414 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
428 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 253 (inferred from the name graph)

Nicaragua, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MercedesLatin(measured from records)
ΜερσεντέςGreek(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)

from the Marian name Nuestra Sehora(oT Maria) de las Mercedes, from the plural of merced ‘grace’, ‘mercy’.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

How Mercedes is read(measured from records)

Mercedes 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.

  • Spanish79%

    from the Marian name Nuestra Sehora(oT Maria) de las Mercedes, from the plural of merced ‘grace’, ‘mercy’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

    a female given name, equivalent to English Mercy (Mary, Our Lady of Mercy)

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

    Latín merces 'precio, recompensa'; por la advocación mariana Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • English8.1%

    A female given name from Spanish, equivalent to English Mercy occasionally borrowed from Spanish.

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

    city, TX

    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)

Mercedes 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 Mercedes is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain#50120,5571 in 415128KMercedes232
AR Argentina#95≈93,000 est.≈1 in 490213Mercedes152
PE Peru#37≈70,000 est.≈1 in 456—Mercedes112
US United States—62,8501 in 5.3K62KMercedes428
PH Philippines—≈62,000 est.≈1 in 1.8K—Mercedes91
EC Ecuador#1552,9851 in 31953KMercedes85
DO Dominican Republic#7≈36,000 est.≈1 in 29319KMercedes82
NI Nicaragua#12≈25,000 est.≈1 in 253—Mercedes44

120,557 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); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; JCE — Nombres más registrados (annual); INEC — civil registry 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

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

  • English given name20 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Mer’Cedes, Mercédes, Mercédès, Mercedés, Mërcëdes

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Mercèdés, Mercédes, Mercédès, Mercèdes, Mercêdes

  • Lao given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Chile, Peru, United States

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Mercede, เมอร์เซเดส, Mércédés, Mërcëdës, เมอรเซเดส

  • Indonesian given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, Philippines, Peru, United States

    Also written Mêrçedeş

  • Russian given name16 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Russia, United States, Spain

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian

    Also written Мерседес, Mersedes, Mercedez, Mercédes, Мерседис

71 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)

Mercedes 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 Portuguese, Mercedes (car manufactured by Mercedes-Benz)

    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)

1850190019502000Mercedes of Orléans, b. 1860Mercedes de Acosta, b. 1892Mercedes McCambridge, b. 1916Mercedes Sosa, b. 1935Mercedes Ruehl, b. 1948Mercedes Aráoz, b. 1961Mercedes McNab, b. 1980Mercedes Mason, b. 1982Mercedes Moné, b. 1992August Ames, b. 1994

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 101 sources across 48 countries.

Official registers attesting Mercedes
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—128K#31
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—121K#71
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202062K#783
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202453K#23
DO Dominican RepublicJCE — Nombres más registrados (annual)202519K#7
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020674#783
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present)2024178#543
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025150—
AR Argentinadatos.gob.ar — nombres.datos.gob.ar per-name lookup (1922–2015)2015139—
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — births 1922–2015 (Kaggle mirror)2015139—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)202435—
ES SpainINE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—30#19,556

Reference works 7

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 Mercedes mean, and where does it come from?
from the Marian name Nuestra Sehora(oT Maria) de las Mercedes, from the plural of merced ‘grace’, ‘mercy’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
Is Mercedes a male or female name?
Mercedes is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
In which country does Mercedes have the most bearers?
In Spain, the national register counted about 121 thousand people named Mercedes, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mercedes.
What are other forms of the name Mercedes?
In the etymology graph, Mercè and Mercédesz are forms of the same name in other languages; Merche is a recorded short or pet form.
How common is the name Mercedes?
In Spain, the national register counted 120,557 people named Mercedes, about 1 in 415 residents.
How common is Mercedes compared with other names?
In Spain, Mercedes is the 50th most common given name of 135,644 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Mercedes?

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

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, “Mercedes” — the 50th most common given name in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mercedes parses inside a full name →