Vargas

surname · Latin script

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

Vargas is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country, where it is the 14th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Person who lives by huts, steep slopes, or a wet enclosed pasture, or person from Vargas, Spain.

rarermore common
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 37(measured from records)
  • BOBolivia≈1 in 94
  • DODominican Republic≈1 in 164

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)

≈270,000 people, est.

#183 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
518 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 37 (inferred from the name graph)

Costa Rica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

VargasLatin(measured from records)
ВаргасCyrillic(measured from records)
ΒάργκαςGreek(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)

Person who lives by huts, steep slopes, or a wet enclosed pasture, or person from Vargas, Spain.

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)

Vargas 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 Vargas is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CO Colombia#14≈270,000 est.≈1 in 179165Vargas215
US United States#421173,8351 in 1.9K174KVargas518
PE Peru#25≈160,000 est.≈1 in 196410KVargas156
BR Brazil#145≈140,000 est.≈1 in 1.5K127Vargas211
CR Costa Rica#2138,1121 in 37138KVargas173
BO Bolivia#237≈120,000 est.≈1 in 94—Vargas103
EC Ecuador—91,2631 in 18591KVargas100
DO Dominican Republic#16≈64,000 est.≈1 in 164—Vargas97

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: RENIEC — DNI population names; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; the co-datosgov-candidates register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA); 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)

Vargas is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname33 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Varga-S, Värgäs, Vargas', Vârgâs, Vârgäs

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Várgas, Varga-S

  • Lao surname34 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, United States, Thailand, Peru

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Värgäs, วาร์กัส, Vargas', Várgás, Vârgâs

  • Indonesian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Philippines, Indonesia, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written Văřğäş

  • Hungarian surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, Hungary, United States, Spain

    Also written Värgäs, Várgás, Vãŕgãś, Värgãs, Vąřğăs

75 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)

Vargas 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.

  • Toledo, Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, Faro, Portugal, México; Spain; before 1492

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In Filipino, a surname from Spanish, common in Metro Manila, Cavite, Quezon, Rizal and Laguna

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

  • In bik, a surname from Spanish, common in Camarines Sur and Catanduanes

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

  • In Estonian, inessive singular of varas

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

  • In Lithuanian, hardship

    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)

1850190019502000Getúlio Vargas, b. 1882Chavela Vargas, b. 1919Virgilio Barco Vargas, b. 1921Teresa Berganza, b. 1935Mario Vargas Llosa, b. 1936Germán Vargas Lleras, b. 1962Jacob Vargas, b. 1971Eduardo Vargas, b. 1989Laura Vargas Koch, b. 1990Ruben Vargas, b. 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 52 sources across 30 countries.

Official registers attesting Vargas
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
PE PeruRENIEC — DNI population names2019410K#12
PE PeruRENIEC — Apellidos más frecuentes (national DNI bearer counts, 2025)2025345K#22
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—175K#197
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020174K#144
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010174K#148
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—138K#3
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000124K#221
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202491K#31
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)—91K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)19951.8K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20081.7K—
EC EcuadorINEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024)20111.7K—

Reference works 7

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 Vargas mean, and where does it come from?
Person who lives by huts, steep slopes, or a wet enclosed pasture, or person from Vargas, Spain. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
In which country does Vargas have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 275 thousand people named Vargas in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled vargas.
Where is Vargas most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Vargas is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 37 people — even though Colombia holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Vargas?
In the United States, the national register counted 173,835 people named Vargas in 2010, about 1 in 1.9 thousand residents.
How common is Vargas compared with other names?
In Colombia, Vargas is the 14th most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Vargas?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

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

The 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, “Vargas” — the 14th most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Vargas parses inside a full name →