Balestra
surname · Latin script
Meaning: crossbow
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/balestɾa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Balestra is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.
- ARArgentina1 in 64K(measured from records)
- BRBrazil1 in 129K
- ITItaly≈1 in 19K
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.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 79 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 19K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Italy, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
crossbow
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Balestra 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT Italy | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 19K | listed | Balestra | 31 |
| BR Brazil | 1,642 | 1 in 129K | 1.6K | Balestra | 79 |
| AR Argentina | 711 | 1 in 64K | 711 | Balestra | 47 |
| FR France | ≈550 est. | ≈1 in 122K | 65 | — | 1 |
| US United States | 461 | 1 in 722K | 497 | Balestra | 47 |
| CH Switzerland | 394 | 1 in 21K | 394 | Balestra | 9 |
| UY Uruguay | 166 | 1 in 20K | 166 | Balestra | 14 |
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); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); the xinhua-italian-manual register; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)
Balestra 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.
Zante, Corfu
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Italian, do lat. balista/ballista, arma de arremesso
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes 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)
- Antonio Balestrab. 1666ITItalian painter (1666-1740)
- Pietro Balestrab. 1841ITroman-catholic archbishop (1841-1912)
- Luigi Balestrab. 1873CHSwiss politician (1873-1970)
- Renato Balestrab. 1924ITItalian fashion designer (1924–2022)
- Pietro Balestrab. 1935CHSwiss economist (1935-2005)
- Roberto Balestrab. 1944BRBrazilian politician
- Annie Balestrab. 1946FRFrench actor
- Alda Balestrab. 1954ITItalian model and producer
- Luigi Balestrab. 1977MXMexican singer
- Matan Balestrab. 1992ILIsraeli footballer
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)
Attested in 26 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.6K | #5,860 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 711 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 497 | #46,253 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 461 | #46,219 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 430 | #46,614 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 394 | #3,347 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 166 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 84 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 81 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 81 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1901 | 80 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 77 | — |
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)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Balestra mean, and where does it come from?
- crossbow Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- What are other forms of the name Balestra?
- In the etymology graph, Arco is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Balestra?
- A machine transcription gives /balestɾa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Balestra have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.4 thousand people named Balestra in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled balestra.
- How common is the name Balestra?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 1,642 people named Balestra, about 1 in 129 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Balestra?
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/balestraThe 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, “Balestra”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.