Alves
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Alves is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 12th most common surname. Recorded meaning: white, pure; corrupted from Alvaro.
- BRBrazil≈1 in 79(inferred from the name graph)
- PTPortugal≈1 in 126
- CHSwitzerland1 in 1.5K
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.
- Brazil (inferred from the name graph)
- #197 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 387 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 79 (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,700,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Brazil, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
white, pure; corrupted from Alvaro
Sources 1
- Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Alves 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #12 | ≈2,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 79 | 1.1K | Alves | 292 |
| PT Portugal | #22 | ≈81,000 est. | ≈1 in 126 | — | Alves | 209 |
| FR France | — | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | 2.3K | Alves | 6 |
| MZ Mozambique | — | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 3 | — | 26 |
| US United States | — | 13,882 | 1 in 24K | 15K | Alves | 387 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 7,761 | 1 in 436 | 7.8K | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | #120 | 5,789 | 1 in 1.5K | 5.8K | Alves | 93 |
| LU Luxembourg | — | ≈340 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 604 | — | 40 |
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 — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es); 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)
Alves is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, A small village in Moray council area, Scotland (OS grid ref NJ1362).
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)
- Joe Alvesb. 1936USFilm designer
- Chico Mendesb. 1944BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian trade union leader and environmentalist (1944–1988)
- Vanessa Alvesb. 1963BRBrazilian actress
- Pedro Proençab. 1970PTnot in their usual namePortuguese football referee
- Bruno Alvesb. 1981PTPortuguese footballer
- Camila Alvesb. 1982BRBrazilian model and designer (born 1983)
- Daniel Alvesb. 1983BRBrazilian footballer
- Daniel Miguel Alves Gomesb. 1983VEPortuguese footballer
- Jôb. 1987BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian former football player (born 1987)
- Rúben Diasb. 1997PTnot in their usual namePortuguese footballer (born 1997)
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 50 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 5.8M | #8 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 15K | #2,380 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 14K | #2,595 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 11K | #2,919 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 7.8K | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 5.8K | #85 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 3.3K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 2.3K | — |
| LU Luxembourg | Luxembourg top-100 surnames (surnam.es) | — | 604 | #88 |
| MZ Mozambique | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 3 | #7 |
| MZ Mozambique | Bancada Parlamentar da FRELIMO — 11 province deputy rosters (10th legislature, 2025-2029) | 2025 | 1 | #10 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 Alves mean, and where does it come from?
- white, pure; corrupted from Alvaro Recorded by Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,….
- In which country does Alves have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.7 million people named Alves in Brazil, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled alves.
- How common is the name Alves?
- In the United States, the national register counted 13,882 people named Alves in 2010, about 1 in 24 thousand residents.
- How common is Alves compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Alves is the 12th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Alves?
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/alvesThe 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, “Alves” — the 12th most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.