Montez

surname · Latin script

Meaning: ‘Mountain-dweller’, from Spanish and Portuguese forms meaning ‘of the mountain’

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Montez is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • COColombia≈1 in 1.1Kas Montes(inferred from the name graph)
  • PEPeru≈1 in 1.2Kas Montes
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 1.2Kas Montes

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Montez itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

48,142 named Montes, 2010

#755 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
414 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 938 (inferred from the name graph)

Costa Rica, as Montes

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MontesLatin(measured from records)
МонтесCyrillic(measured from records)
ΜοντηςGreek(measured from records)

Locally spelled Montes in MX Mexico, US United States, PE Peru 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)

‘Mountain-dweller’, from Spanish and Portuguese forms meaning ‘of the mountain’.

Sources 1

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

Where in the world(measured from records)

Montez 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 Montez is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States—48,142as Montes1 in 6.9K48KMontes414
CO Colombia#162≈44,000 est.≈1 in 1.1K29Montes148
ES Spain#11239,617as Montes1 in 1.3K40KMontes206
PE Peru#175≈28,000 est.≈1 in 1.2K—Montes106
VE Venezuela#211≈25,000 est.≈1 in 1.2K—Montes77
SV El Salvador#189≈5,600 est.≈1 in 1.2K—Montes45
CR Costa Rica—5,436as Montes1 in 9385.4K—71
UY Uruguay—3,247as Montes1 in 1K3.2K—56
MX Mexico#103——3.5KMontes233

48,142 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: RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; 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).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Montez is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Spanish surname20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Mexico, Brazil, Portugal

    Languages: Spanish, Portuguese

    Also written Montéz, Montêz, Móntez, Mönťëż, Möntëz

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, France, Canada, Belgium

    Also written Möntëz

43 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)

Montez 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.

  • topographic name for a mountain dweller, from mantes ‘of the mountain’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • from a variant of the adjective mantes, having the same meaning as 1.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Croatian, britanska plesačica, kći Škota i Kreolke, ljubavnica bavarskog kralja Ludwiga I, proglašena groficom; prognana 1848, živjela je od 1852. u Sjevernoj Americi; spominju je i neki naši pisci

    as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export

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)

180018501900195020002050Lola Montez, b. 1821Ricardo Montez, b. 1923Yolanda Montes, b. 1932Mario Montez, b. 1935Chris Montez, b. 1943Bia Montez, b. 1958João Montez, b. 1990Steven Montez, b. 1997Alexandre Montez, b. 2002

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 20 sources across 11 countries.

Official registers attesting Montez
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201010K#3,539
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020209.5K#3,661
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020008.3K#3,921
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—28#66,145
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—28#65,950
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—1#31,667
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 3

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • 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 Montez mean, and where does it come from?
‘Mountain-dweller’, from Spanish and Portuguese forms meaning ‘of the mountain’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Montez have the most bearers?
In the United States, the national register counted about 48 thousand people named Montes, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Montez most common?
No national register we hold counts the spelling Montez itself. The densest figure for its family of spellings is Costa Rica's: the national register counts about 1 in 938 people named Montes.
How common is the name Montez?
In the United States, the national register counted 48,142 people named Montes in 2010, about 1 in 6.9 thousand residents.
How common is Montez compared with other names?
In Mexico, Montez is the 103rd most common surname of 206,803 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Montez?

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

The 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, “Montez” — the 103rd most common surname in Mexico. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Montez parses inside a full name →