Acosta
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: graphic name for someone who lived on a hillside or near
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 27 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020
/aˈkos.t̪a/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary
Acosta is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Mexico than in any other country, where it is the 70th most common surname.
- UYUruguay1 in 61(measured from records)
- PYParaguay≈1 in 110
- DODominican Republic≈1 in 220
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 Acosta itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. 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.
- Mexico (inferred from the name graph)
- #295 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 473 (measured from records)
- 1 in 61 (inferred from the name graph)
≈260,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Uruguay
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)from a mistaken analysis of Da Costa as d’Acosta
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
How Acosta is read
(measured from records)Acosta is one spelling over 2 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.
- Spanish74%
graphic name for someone who lived on a hillside or near
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
inflection of acostar (“to arrive at the coast”):
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English14%
from a mistaken analysis of Da Costa as d’Acosta
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
A Spanish habitational surname from Catalan.
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)Acosta 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MX Mexico | #70 | ≈260,000 est. | ≈1 in 505 | 4.9K | Acosta | 238 |
| AR Argentina | #20 | 199,717 | 1 in 228 | 200K | Acosta | 166 |
| CO Colombia | #52 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 329 | 101 | Acosta | 209 |
| US United States | #799 | 103,418 | 1 in 3.2K | 105K | Acosta | 473 |
| VE Venezuela | #52 | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 300 | 703 | Acosta | 100 |
| PY Paraguay | #13 | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 106 | — | Acosta | 88 |
| UY Uruguay | #12 | 55,789 | 1 in 61 | 56K | Acosta | 117 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #31 | ≈53,000 est. | ≈1 in 216 | — | Acosta | 85 |
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); RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)Acosta 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.
Cristobal Acosta, physician; from Costa
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, Nueva Ecija and Cavite
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)- Mercedes de Acostab. 1892USAmerican poet, playwright, and novelist (1893-1968)
- Hilda Gadea Acostab. 1925PEPeruvian economist, Communist leader, and author, 1925-1974
- Alexander Acostab. 1969USAmerican attorney and politician
- Jim Acostab. 1971USAmerican journalist
- César Faríasb. 1973VEnot in their usual nameVenezuelan manager
- Juana Acostab. 1976COColombian actress
- Johnny Acostab. 1983CRCosta Rican association football player
- Lautaro Acostab. 1988ARArgentine footballer
- Nahitan Nándezb. 1995UYnot in their usual nameUruguayan footballer
- Kellyn Acostab. 1995USAmerican soccer player
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)45 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 200K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 105K | #294 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 103K | #302 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 76K | #377 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 56K | — |
| MX Mexico | RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset) | — | 4.9K | #74 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 101 | #30 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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
- 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 Acosta come from?
- from a mistaken analysis of Da Costa as d’Acosta Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Acosta?
- In Spanish /aˈkos.t̪a/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Acosta mean?
- In Spanish, graphic name for someone who lived on a hillside or near
- In which country does Acosta have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 259 thousand people named Acosta in Mexico, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled acosta.
- Where is Acosta most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Acosta is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 61 people — even though Mexico holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Acosta?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 199,717 people named Acosta, about 1 in 228 residents.
- How common is Acosta compared with other names?
- In Mexico, Acosta is the 70th most common surname of 206,803 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Acosta?
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/acostaThe 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, “Acosta” — the 70th most common surname in Mexico. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.