Bernal
surname · Latin script
Meaning: strong as a bear (German)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/bernal/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Bernal is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Colombia than in any other country, where it is the 82nd most common surname.
- PYParaguay≈1 in 516(inferred from the name graph)
- COColombia≈1 in 709
- ESSpain1 in 1.3K
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)
- #936 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 400 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 516 (inferred from the name graph)
≈69,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Paraguay, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
strong as a bear (German)
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)
Bernal 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO Colombia | #82 | ≈69,000 est. | ≈1 in 709 | 50 | Bernal | 188 |
| US United States | — | 39,693 | 1 in 8.4K | 40K | Bernal | 400 |
| ES Spain | #106 | 37,945 | 1 in 1.3K | 38K | Bernal | 205 |
| PH Philippines | #249 | ≈37,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.9K | — | Bernal | 86 |
| AR Argentina | #382 | 15,834 | 1 in 2.9K | 16K | Bernal | 93 |
| PY Paraguay | #101 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 516 | — | Bernal | 55 |
| PE Peru | #357 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | — | Bernal | 90 |
| CL Chile | #346 | ≈7,800 est. | ≈1 in 2.3K | 1 | Bernal | 101 |
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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; the co-datosgov-candidates register; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021). 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)
Bernal is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Spanish, Aféresis de Bernaldo.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
In Irish, This, like Burnell, is a variant of Berneval. See Barneville
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Filipino, a surname from Spanish, notably borne by:
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)
- John Desmond Bernalb. 1901GBIrish scientist (1901-1971)
- Antonio Arias Bernalb. 1913MXMexican cartoonist and caricaturist (1913-1960)
- Martin Bernalb. 1937USBritish political historian (1937- 2013)
- Daniel Écijab. 1963AUnot in their usual nameSpanish producer and director
- Gael García Bernalb. 1978MXMexican actor and producer
- Ruben Kihuenb. 1980USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician
- Dario Yazbek Bernalb. 1990MXMexican actor
- Egan Bernalb. 1997COColombian cyclist
- Isaac Romerob. 2000ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer (born 2000)
- Marc Bernalb. 2007ESSpanish 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 49 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 40K | #873 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 39K | #883 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 38K | #127 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 38K | #127 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 29K | #1,089 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 16K | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 50 | #66 |
| 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
- What does the name Bernal mean, and where does it come from?
- strong as a bear (German) Recorded by Dicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,….
- How do you pronounce Bernal?
- A machine transcription gives /bernal/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Bernal have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 69 thousand people named Bernal in Colombia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bernal.
- How common is the name Bernal?
- In the United States, the national register counted 39,693 people named Bernal in 2010, about 1 in 8.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Bernal compared with other names?
- In Colombia, Bernal is the 82nd most common surname of 144,306 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Bernal?
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/bernalThe 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, “Bernal” — the 82nd most common surname in Colombia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.