Cantero

surname · Latin script

Meaning: quarry worker, quarryman

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/kanteɾo/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Cantero is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country. In Paraguay it is the 62nd most common surname.

rarermore common
  • PYParaguay≈1 in 350(inferred from the name graph)
  • ARArgentina1 in 1.7K
  • UYUruguay1 in 1.9K

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.

Argentina (measured from records)

27,230 people

Sources
221 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 350 (inferred from the name graph)

Paraguay, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

quarry worker, quarryman

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Cantero 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.

Where Cantero is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
AR Argentina#26827,2301 in 1.7K27KCantero83
PY Paraguay#62≈21,000 est.≈1 in 350—Cantero55
ES Spain#28615,3231 in 3.3K15KCantero163
CO Colombia#857≈4,500 est.≈1 in 11K1Cantero57
PH Philippines—≈4,500 est.≈1 in 24K—Cantero37
UY Uruguay#3351,7831 in 1.9K1.8KCantero26

27,230 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Cantero is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Philippines, Spain, United States

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Cantéro, Cantėro

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Cantéro

41 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Cantero 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 Italian, chamber pot

    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)

190019502000Francisco Cantera Burgos, b. 1901Castor Cantero, b. 1918El Fary, b. 1937Carlos Cantero, b. 1956David Cantero, b. 1961Manuel Cantero, b. 1973Roque Santa Cruz, b. 1981Diego Santa Cruz, b. 1982Sandra Gómez, b. 1993Ander Cantero, b. 1995

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)

FormalEstimado/a Cantero,Dear Cantero, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Cantero,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 25 sources across 17 countries.

Official registers attesting Cantero
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—27K—
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—15K#347
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—15K#347
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—1.8K—
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—1#115

Reference works 3

  • 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 Cantero mean, and where does it come from?
quarry worker, quarryman Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Cantero?
A machine transcription gives /kanteɾo/ (IPA) for Spanish.
In which country does Cantero have the most bearers?
In Argentina, the national register counted about 27 thousand people named Cantero, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cantero.
How common is the name Cantero?
In Argentina, the national register counted 27,230 people named Cantero, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
How common is Cantero compared with other names?
In Argentina, Cantero is the 268th most common surname of 398,256 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cantero?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cantero

The 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, “Cantero” — the 268th most common surname in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Cantero parses inside a full name →