Bes
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: bes (two-thirds of an as (Roman measurement), around 219.3 grams)
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 16 countries · latest register: Familienaam.be, 2008
/ˈbes/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary
Bes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 23K(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 67K
- BEBelgium1 in 129K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. 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.
- Spain (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 81 (measured from records)
- 1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
751 people
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Netherlands
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)bes (two-thirds of an as (Roman measurement), around 219.3 grams)
Cited for this meaning 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Bes is read
(measured from records)Bes is one spelling over 3 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.
- French56%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Bes in French.
- Spanish13%
bes (two-thirds of an as (Roman measurement), around 219.3 grams)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English7.7%
Egyptian god
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Bes 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.
751 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)Bes is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In cdo, to work the machine with the feet. Be A a step in front of a bedstead
as a wordDictionary of the Foochow Dialect
In Russian, "evil, fury."
as a wordA Dictionary of Period Russian Names (Wickenden / Goldschmidt 1996)
In trk-pro, hoar-frost
as a wordStarLing Tower of Babel etymological databases (Starostin et al.)
In Catalan, plural of be (“the letter B”)
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)- Maria Elisabeth Besb. 1882NLDutch chemical engineer & Delft city councillor (1882-1938)
- Josep Maria Trias de Bes i Girób. 1890ESSpanish politician and jurist (1890-1965)
- Santiago Dexeus i Trias de Besb. 1935ESCatalan physician (1935–2024)
- Peter Besb. 1945NLDutch visual artist (born 1945)
- Lennart Besb. 19681968--
- Frédéric Besb. 1970FRFrench politician
- Eva Besb. 1973ESSpanish tennis player
- Jeff Besb. 1973CACanadian ice hockey player
- Annemieke Besb. 1978NLDutch sailor (born 1978)
- Digna Bes LagaESSpanish politician
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)30 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 751 | #5,699 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 751 | #5,698 |
| NL Netherlands | CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007) | 2007 | 737 | #2,454 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 443 | #18,977 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames by state (real counts) from electoral rolls | — | 227 | #2,666 |
| IN India | Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls | — | 116 | #25,774 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 91 | #16,744 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 28 | #36,567 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 10 | #19,585 |
Reference works 7
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- 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)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Bes mean, and where does it come from?
- bes (two-thirds of an as (Roman measurement), around 219.3 grams) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Bes?
- It depends on the language: in Spanish /ˈbes/ (Wiktionary); in English /biːz/ (Wiktionary).
- In which country does Bes have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 751 people named Bes, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bes.
- Where is Bes most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Bes is densest in the Netherlands — about 1 in 23 thousand people — even though Spain holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Bes?
- In Spain, the national register counted 751 people named Bes, about 1 in 67 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Bes?
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/besThe 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, “Bes”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.