Santiago
loc · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Santiago is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Person from Santiago, the name of places in Spain and Portugal with a church dedicated to St James.
- COColombia≈1 in 290(inferred from the name graph)
- ARArgentina≈1 in 331
- ESSpain1 in 453
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.
- Colombia (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 473 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 290 (inferred from the name graph)
≈170,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Colombia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Santiago- in US United States and Säntiägö in EC Ecuador.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Person from Santiago, the name of places in Spain and Portugal with a church dedicated to St James.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Santiago 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO Colombia | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 290 | — | Santiago | 229 |
| AR Argentina | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 331 | 5.7K | Santiago | 203 |
| ES Spain | 110,532 | 1 in 453 | 111K | Santiago | 253 |
| US United States | 80,841 | 1 in 4.1K | 126K | Santiago- | 473 |
| CN China | ≈53,000 est. | ≈1 in 26K | — | Santiago | 20 |
| EC Ecuador | 48,797 | 1 in 346 | 49K | Säntiägö | 123 |
| BO Bolivia | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 667 | — | Santiago | 59 |
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INEC — civil registry names; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)
Santiago 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.
Literally ‘St James’: Jago is an obsolete Spanish form of the Biblical name Jacobus (see }Jacob and jJames in main dictionary). The disciple St James the Greater, brother of John the Baptist, is the patron saint of Spain.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Spanish, James
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Spanish, Del grito español Sancte Jacobe ‘¡Oh Santo Jacobo!’, luego Santi Yagüe.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Catholic inspiration; de Santiago de Compostela
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In English, city; Chile
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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)
- Santiago Ramón y Cajalb. 1852ESSpanish scientist (1852-1934)
- Alfonso XIIIb. 1886ESnot in their usual nameKing of Spain from 1886 to 1931 (1886–1941)
- Santiago Bernabéub. 1895ESSpanish footballer (1895-1978)
- Santiago Calatravab. 1951ESSpanish-Swiss engineer, architect, and artist (born 1951)
- Guillermo Lassob. 1955ECnot in their usual name55th President of Ecuador from 2021 to 2023
- Robert Trujillob. 1964USnot in their usual nameAmerican bass guitarist
- Santiago Cañizaresb. 1969ESSpanish footballer
- Santiago Peña Palaciosb. 1978PYPresident of Paraguay since 2023
- Santi Cazorlab. 1984ESnot in their usual nameSpanish association football player
- Federico Valverdeb. 1998UYnot in their usual nameUruguayan professional footballer (born 1998)
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 119 sources across 52 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 126K | #238 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 122K | #248 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 111K | #80 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 109K | #42 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 91K | #302 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 81K | #654 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 56K | #79 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 56K | #79 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 49K | #41 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 7.6K | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 5.7K | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Nombres de nacimientos (2012–present) | 2024 | 2K | #72 |
Reference works 8
- 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
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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
- In which country does Santiago have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 170 thousand people named Santiago in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled santiago.
- What does the name Santiago mean, and where does it come from?
- Person from Santiago, the name of places in Spain and Portugal with a church dedicated to St James. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How common is the name Santiago?
- In Spain, the national register counted 110,532 people named Santiago, about 1 in 453 residents.
What do you want to know about Santiago?
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/santiagoThe 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, “Santiago”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.