Chinchilla

surname · Latin script

Meaning: Either of two small, crepuscular rodents of the genus Chinchilla, native to the Andes, prized for their very soft fur and often kept as pets

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 12 countries

/t͡ʃinˈt͡ʃiʃa/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary

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Chinchilla is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Costa Rica than in any other country, where it is the 53rd most common surname.

  • CRCosta Rica1 in 208(measured from records)
  • GTGuatemala≈1 in 890
  • HNHonduras≈1 in 1K

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.

Costa Rica (measured from records)

24,563 people

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Record sources
250 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 208 (inferred from the name graph)

Costa Rica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

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Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)
ChinchillaLatin(measured from records)
ЧинчильяCyrillic(measured from records)

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)

Either of two small, crepuscular rodents of the genus Chinchilla, native to the Andes, prized for their very soft fur and often kept as pets.

Cited for this meaning 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Chinchilla is found

(measured from records)

Chinchilla 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 Chinchilla is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
CR Costa Rica#5324,5631 in 20825KChinchilla96
GT Guatemala#59≈21,000 est.≈1 in 886—Chinchilla50
HN Honduras#145≈11,000 est.≈1 in 998—Chinchilla52
CO Colombia#738≈7,900 est.≈1 in 6.7K5Chinchilla81
VE Venezuela#621≈4,800 est.≈1 in 5.9K—Chinchilla27
SV El Salvador#268≈3,600 est.≈1 in 1.8K—Chinchilla37

24,563 people counted by TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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: TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; the co-datosgov-candidates register. 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)

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

  • French surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Spain, Canada

    Also written Chïnchilla

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Chinchílla

45 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)

Chinchilla 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 Dutch, chinchilla, rodent of the genus Chinchilla

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In German, chinchilla (rodent)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Latvian, Šinšilas

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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)
1950196019701980Laura Chinchilla, b. 1959Mauricio Montero, b. 1963Pablo Chinchilla, b. 1978

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 Chinchilla,Dear Chinchilla, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Chinchilla,Hello, (English)

Evidence

(measured from records)

19 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 12 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Chinchilla mean, and where does it come from?
Either of two small, crepuscular rodents of the genus Chinchilla, native to the Andes, prized for their very soft fur and often kept as pets. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
How do you pronounce Chinchilla?
It depends on the language: in Spanish /t͡ʃinˈt͡ʃiʃa/ (Wiktionary); in English /t͡ʃɪnˈt͡ʃɪlə/ (Wiktionary).
Which countries have the most people with the surname Chinchilla?
In Costa Rica, the national register counted about 25 thousand people named Chinchilla, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chinchilla. After it come Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and Venezuela; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Chinchilla most common?
Chinchilla is densest in Costa Rica, where the national register counts about 1 in 208 people carrying it.
How common is the name Chinchilla?
In Costa Rica, the national register counted 24,563 people named Chinchilla, about 1 in 208 residents.
How common is Chinchilla compared with other names?
In Costa Rica, Chinchilla is the 53rd most common surname of 8,899 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Chinchilla?

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

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, “Chinchilla” — the 53rd most common surname in Costa Rica. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Chinchilla parses inside a full name →