Mora
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Mora is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Costa Rica than in any other country, where it is the 3rd most common surname. Recorded meaning: habitational name from any of the places named Mora, in some cases from mora ‘mulberry’ (Late Latin mora, originally the plural of classical Latin morum).
- CRCosta Rica1 in 38(measured from records)
- ECEcuador1 in 220
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 360
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 Mora 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.
- Costa Rica (measured from records)
- #238 (measured from records)
- 6 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 439 (measured from records)
- 1 in 38 (inferred from the name graph)
135,368 people
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Costa Rica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Moura in PT Portugal.
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)
habitational name from any of the places named Mora, in some cases from mora ‘mulberry’ (Late Latin mora, originally the plural of classical Latin morum).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 28 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Mora 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CR Costa Rica | #3 | 135,368 | 1 in 38 | 135K | Mora | 151 |
| CO Colombia | #61 | ≈88,000 est. | ≈1 in 555 | 71 | Mora | 189 |
| VE Venezuela | #58 | ≈80,000 est. | ≈1 in 360 | — | Mora | 117 |
| EC Ecuador | #4 | 76,844 | 1 in 220 | 77K | Mora | 95 |
| US United States | — | 57,464 | 1 in 5.8K | 57K | Mora | 439 |
| PT Portugal | #58 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 539 | listed | Moura | 160 |
135,368 people counted by TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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: TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; the co-datosgov-candidates register; 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Mora is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
from Morandus, an old personal name of uncertain derivation and meaning.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
topographic name from Old Italian mora ‘pile of stones’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
possibly a nickname from mora ‘sickness’, ‘plague’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
possibly a nickname from mora ‘vampire’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Spanish, someone who lived by a mulberry or blackberry bush, from Sp. mora mulberry, blackberry (LL mora, originally the pi. of class. L morum). There are numerous places named with this word, and the surname may also be a habi¬ tation name from any of these. It is also possible that it was used as a nickname, with reference to the dark colour of the
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
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)
- Juan Vicente Pérezb. 1909VEnot in their usual nameVenezuelan supercentenarian, the world's oldest verified living man (1909–2024)
- Elizabeth Catlettb. 1915USnot in their usual nameBlack American-born Mexican artist (1915–2012)
- Terézia Morab. 1971HUGerman Hungarian writer, screenwriter and translator (born 1971)
- Mauricio Solísb. 1972CRnot in their usual nameCosta Rican footballer
- Melani Olivaresb. 1973ESnot in their usual nameSpanish actress
- Juan Luis Morab. 1973ESSpanish footballer
- José Juan Bareab. 1984USnot in their usual namePuerto Rican basketball player (born 1984)
- Celso Borgesb. 1988CRnot in their usual nameCosta Rican association football player
- Nicolás Castillob. 1993CLnot in their usual nameChilean association football player
- Rodrigo Morab. 2007PTPortuguese footballer (born 2007)
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 83 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 135K | #4 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 77K | #39 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 57K | #583 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 57K | #578 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 41K | #759 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 741 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 71 | #47 |
Reference works 12
- 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
- Lietuvių kalbos institutas — Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Lithuanian surname dictionary)
- 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)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Mora mean, and where does it come from?
- habitational name from any of the places named Mora, in some cases from mora ‘mulberry’ (Late Latin mora, originally the plural of classical Latin morum). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- What are other forms of the name Mora?
- In the etymology graph, Miya, Moral and Maie are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Mora have the most bearers?
- In Costa Rica, the national register counted about 135 thousand people named Mora, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled mora.
- Where is Mora most common?
- Mora is densest in Costa Rica, where the national register counts about 1 in 38 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Mora?
- In Costa Rica, the national register counted 135,368 people named Mora, about 1 in 38 residents.
- How common is Mora compared with other names?
- In Costa Rica, Mora is the 3rd most common surname of 8,899 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Mora?
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/moraThe 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, “Mora” — the 3rd most common surname in Costa Rica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.