Moura

surname · Latin script

Meaning: habitational name from Moura in Beja, Portugal, or from any of the like named places in Galicia

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

Moura 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.

rarermore common
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 539(inferred from the name graph)
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 38as Mora
  • ECEcuador1 in 220as Mora

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 Moura 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)

135,368 named Mora

#238 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

6 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
439 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 539 (inferred from the name graph)

Portugal, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MoraLatin(measured from records)
โมราThai(measured from records)
МоураCyrillic(measured from records)
ΜοίραGreek(measured from records)
몰아Hangul(measured from records)
მორაGeorgian(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Mora in CR Costa Rica, VE Venezuela, US United States and 2 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)

habitational name from Moura in Beja, Portugal, or from any of the like named places in Galicia.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Where in the world(measured from records)

Moura 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 Moura is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CR Costa Rica#3135,368as Mora1 in 38135KMora151
CO Colombia#61≈88,000 est.≈1 in 55571Mora189
VE Venezuela#58≈80,000 est.≈1 in 360—Mora117
EC Ecuador#476,844as Mora1 in 22077KMora95
US United States—57,464as Mora1 in 5.8K57KMora439
PT Portugal#58≈19,000 est.≈1 in 539listedMoura160

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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Moura is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Brazil, Australia, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, Dutch

    Also written Mourà

  • German surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, Switzerland, Austria

    Also written Mourae, Mõûřã, Mourä

  • Danish surname6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Denmark, United States, Norway, Sweden

    Languages: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish

    Also written Móura

  • Finnish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Mõûrä

51 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)

Moura 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.

  • dialect variant of More 3.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Galician, feminine singular of mouro

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

  • In Latvian, pilsēta Portugālē ("Moura"), Bežas apgabalā, 15200 iedzīvotāju (2011. g.)

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)

0500100015002000Saint Moura, b. 201Eduardo Souto de Moura, b. 1952Toninho Moura, b. 1954Julinho, b. 1965Wagner Moura, b. 1976Deborah Secco, b. 1979Ana Moura, b. 1979Rafael Moura, b. 1983Lucas Moura, b. 1992Bruno Guimarães, b. 1997

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 36 sources across 21 countries.

Official registers attesting Moura
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 202020202.5K#11,826
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 201020102.2K#13,976
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 200020001.7K#15,648
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—8—
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—5#8,396
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20191—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20121—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)19991—
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • 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

What does the name Moura mean, and where does it come from?
habitational name from Moura in Beja, Portugal, or from any of the like named places in Galicia. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Moura 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.
How common is the name Moura?
In Costa Rica, the national register counted 135,368 people named Mora, about 1 in 38 residents.
How common is Moura compared with other names?
In Costa Rica, Moura is the 3rd most common surname of 8,899 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Moura?

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

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, “Moura” — the 3rd most common surname in Costa Rica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Moura parses inside a full name →