Pla
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Initialism of Port of London Authority
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 14 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/pla/(machine-generated) Spanish · model-generated · uncertain
Pla is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country.
- UYUruguay1 in 3.5K(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 4.7K
- FRFrance≈1 in 39K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Spain (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 187 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.5K (inferred from the name graph)
10,711 people
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)flat, even, level
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Pla is read
(measured from records)Pla is one spelling over 4 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.
- Spanish61%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Pla in Spanish.
- English15%
pers. name (P. Zadora)
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Initialism of Port of London Authority.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French12%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Pla in French.
- Catalan9.9%
flat, even, level
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Pla 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.
10,711 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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)Pla 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 dsb, by (near or next to)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Welsh, plague, pestilence
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In kw, plague, pest
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)- Enrique Pla y Denielb. 1876ESSpanish Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church (1876-1968)
- Josep Plab. 1897ESSpanish journalist (1897–1981)
- Josefina Plab. 1903ESParaguayan sculptor, ceramist, dramatist, poet, and historian (1903–1999)
- Beatriz Carvajalb. 1949ESnot in their usual nameSpanish actress
- Joaquim Torra i Plab. 1962ESformer president of Catalonia (born 1962)
- Conrad Plab. 1966CACanadian actor and former professional kickboxer
- Albert Plab. 1966ESSpanish singer-songwriter
- Carme Plab. 1966ESactress
- Enmanuel Reyes Plab. 1992CUCuban-Spanish boxer
- Oriol Pla i Solinab. 1993ESSpanish actor
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)22 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 14 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 11K | #514 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 11K | #514 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 1.2K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 957 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 955 | #26,847 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 936 | #26,143 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 813 | #27,821 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 297 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 275 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 268 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 251 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 213 | — |
Reference works 3
- 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
- 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
- Where does the name Pla come from?
- flat, even, level Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Pla?
- In the etymology graph, Pal is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Pla?
- In Spanish /pla/. Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- What does the name Pla mean?
- In English, Initialism of Port of London Authority.
- In which country does Pla have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 11 thousand people named Pla, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pla.
- Where is Pla most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Pla is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 3.5 thousand people — even though Spain holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Pla?
- In Spain, the national register counted 10,711 people named Pla, about 1 in 4.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Pla compared with other names?
- In Spain, Pla is the 386th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pla?
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/plaThe 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, “Pla” — the 386th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.