Puma
surname · Latin script
Meaning: cougar, mountain lion, puma (Puma concolor)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/puma/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Puma is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Peru than in any other country.
- PEPeru≈1 in 1.2K(inferred from the name graph)
- BOBolivia≈1 in 1.5K
- ECEcuador1 in 2.4K
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.
- Peru (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 148 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈27,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Peru, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
cougar, mountain lion, puma (Puma concolor)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Where in the world(measured from records)
Puma 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PE Peru | #169 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Puma | 69 |
| BO Bolivia | #118 | ≈7,600 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Puma | 29 |
| EC Ecuador | #538 | 6,937 | 1 in 2.4K | 6.9K | Puma | 35 |
| AR Argentina | — | 3,321 | 1 in 14K | 3.3K | Puma | 49 |
| US United States | — | 2,386 | 1 in 139K | 2.4K | Puma | 148 |
| SL Sierra Leone | — | ≈320 est. | ≈1 in 21K | 2 | — | — |
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); INEC — civil registry names; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; NEC/ECSL — 2018 Local Council, Chairperson and Mayor nominated candidates. 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)
Puma 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.
Beat of the heart.
as a nameThe African book of names
In Portuguese, puma; cougar; mountain lion (Puma concolor, a large feline of the Americas)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Malay, puma (mountain lion); cougar (Puma concolor)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In qwc, puma, cougar, mountain lion (Puma concolor).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Slovenian, puma, mountain lion (Puma concolor)
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)
- Salvatore Pumab. 1920ITItalian opera singer, tenor (1920-2007)
- Joe Pumab. 1927USAmerican musician (1927–2000)
- Ronald Pumab. 1980BOBolivian association football player
- Nora ReyesPEnot in their usual namePeruvian doctor
- Miluska Marina Zamalloa PumaPEPeruvian physicist
- Nadia PumaITresearcher, ORCID id # 0000-0002-9743-2808
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)
Attested in 38 sources across 20 countries.
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
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 Puma mean, and where does it come from?
- cougar, mountain lion, puma (Puma concolor) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Puma?
- A machine transcription gives /puma/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Puma have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 27 thousand people named Puma in Peru, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled puma.
- How common is the name Puma?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 6,937 people named Puma in 2024, about 1 in 2.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Puma compared with other names?
- In Peru, Puma is the 169th most common surname of 173,371 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Puma?
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/pumaThe 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, “Puma” — the 169th most common surname in Peru. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.