Castillo
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: castle (a large building that is fortified and contains many defences)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kastiʎo/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Castillo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country, where it is the 26th most common surname.
- DODominican Republic≈1 in 104(inferred from the name graph)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 123
- PEPeru≈1 in 168
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- #146 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 515 (measured from records)
- 1 in 100 (inferred from the name graph)
≈240,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Costa Rica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Castillo- in CR Costa Rica.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A habitational surname from Spanish, from Spanish castillo (“castle”).
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
How Castillo is read(measured from records)
Castillo is one spelling over 2 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.
- Spanish72%
castle (a large building that is fortified and contains many defences)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English14%
A habitational surname from Spanish, from Spanish castillo (“castle”).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Castillo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | #26 | ≈240,000 est. | ≈1 in 448 | — | Castillo | 170 |
| VE Venezuela | #12 | ≈230,000 est. | ≈1 in 123 | 1.4K | Castillo | 131 |
| US United States | #290 | 230,420 | 1 in 1.4K | 231K | Castillo | 515 |
| PE Peru | #22 | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 168 | 373K | Castillo | 167 |
| CO Colombia | #34 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 320 | 109 | Castillo | 218 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #9 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 104 | — | Castillo | 127 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 92,582 | 1 in 183 | 93K | Castillo | 107 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 50,858 | 1 in 100 | 51K | Castillo- | 137 |
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: the pe-reniec-name-freq register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) 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)
Castillo 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 Italian, Castiglioni, Castelfranco e Castelnuovo, in Lombardia e nel Veneto, sono frequenti in antiche famiglie israelitiche, come etnici dei centri di provenienza lombardi e veneti di questo nome.
as a nameDizionario dei cognomi italiani
In Filipino, a common surname from Spanish, equivalent to Spanish Castillo, common in the Philippines, widespread across Tagalog-speaking areas but most concentrated around Metro Manila, Batangas, Laguna, Bulacan and Cavite.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In ivb, a common surname from Spanish, most common in Batanes
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)
- Ramón Castillob. 1873ARformer President of Argentina (1873-1944)
- Carlos Castillo Armasb. 1914GTGuatemalan President (1914-1957)
- Yma Sumacb. 1922PEnot in their usual namePeruvian-American singer (1922–2008)
- Sergio Badilla Castillob. 1947SEChilean poet
- Luis de la Fuenteb. 1961ESnot in their usual nameSpanish football manager (born 1961)
- Pedro Castillob. 1969PEPresident of Peru from 2021 to 2022
- Raúl Castillob. 1977USAmerican actor and playwright
- Kevin Mirallasb. 1987BEnot in their usual nameBelgian association football player (born 1987)
- Sandro Ramírezb. 1995ESnot in their usual nameSpanish association football player
- Alfred Garcíab. 1997ESnot in their usual nameSpanish singer, songwriter, musician and producer
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 52 sources across 32 countries.
Reference works 6
- 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)
- 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
- Where does the name Castillo come from?
- A habitational surname from Spanish, from Spanish castillo (“castle”). Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Castillo?
- A machine transcription gives /kastiʎo/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Castillo mean?
- In Spanish, castle (a large building that is fortified and contains many defences)
- In which country does Castillo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 243 thousand people named Castillo in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled castillo.
- Where is Castillo most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Castillo is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 100 people — even though Philippines holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Castillo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 230,420 people named Castillo in 2010, about 1 in 1.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Castillo compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Castillo is the 26th most common surname of 876,464 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Castillo?
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/castilloThe 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, “Castillo” — the 26th most common surname in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.