Souza
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Souza is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country. In Brazil it is the 3rd most common surname. Recorded meaning: person from Sousa, a Portuguese place name perhaps meaning 'salt-marsh'.
- PYParaguay≈1 in 4.4K(inferred from the name graph)
- INIndia1 in 1.1M
- PTPortugal≈1 in 101as Sousa
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 Souza 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.
- Argentina (measured from records)
- #36 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 427 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 4.4K (inferred from the name graph)
256,043 named Sosa
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Paraguay, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Sousa in AR Argentina, PT Portugal, UY Uruguay and 2 more and Silva in EC Ecuador.
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)
person from Sousa, a Portuguese place name perhaps meaning 'salt-marsh'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Souza 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | — | 256,043as Sosa | 1 in 178 | 256K | Sousa | 76 |
| US United States | — | 161,633as Silva | 1 in 2.1K | 163K | Souza | 427 |
| PT Portugal | #6 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 101 | listed | Sousa | 212 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 75,135as Sosa | 1 in 45 | 75K | Sousa | 32 |
| ES Spain | #384 | 48,968as Silva | 1 in 1K | 49K | Sousa | 135 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 47,379as Silva | 1 in 357 | 47K | Silva | 22 |
| AO Angola | #14 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 786 | 4 | Sousa | 66 |
| BR Brazil | #3 | 3,877as Sosa | 1 in 55K | 224K | Souza | 310 |
| PY Paraguay | #368 | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | — | Souza | 38 |
| IN India | — | 1,178 | 1 in 1.1M | 1.2K | Souza | 126 |
256,043 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national), counting the spelling sosa. 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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); INEC — civil registry names; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family 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)
Souza is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Portuguese, a surname; variation or dated form of Sousa.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
rocks; origin from rocks
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
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)
- Steven E. de Souzab. 1947USAmerican screenwriter and film director
- Luciana Souzab. 1966BRBrazilian singer
- Joel Souzab. 1973USAmerican screenwriter and film director (born 1973)
- Ana Carolinab. 1974BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian singer
- Decob. 1977BRnot in their usual namePortuguese footballer (born 1977)
- Vágner Loveb. 1984BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian association football player
- Karla Souzab. 1985MXMexican actress (born 1985)
- Josimar Rodrigues Souza Robertob. 1987BRBrazilian association football player
- Anderson Souza Conceiçãob. 1994BRBrazilian footballer (born 1994)
- Beatriz Souzab. 1998BRBrazilian judoka (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 40 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 9.2M | #4 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 23K | #1,538 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 22K | #1,601 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 20K | #1,627 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 8.4K | — |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 3.6K | #33 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 3.2K | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 2K | #2,425 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 2K | #2,425 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 1.2K | #4,824 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | — | 76 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 1 | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
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 Souza mean, and where does it come from?
- person from Sousa, a Portuguese place name perhaps meaning 'salt-marsh'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Souza have the most bearers?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 256 thousand people named Sosa, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Souza?
- In India, the national register counted 1,178 people named Souza, about 1 in 1.1 million residents.
- How common is Souza compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Souza is the 3rd most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Souza?
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/souzaThe 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, “Souza” — the 3rd most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.