Chinchilla
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
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. Recorded 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.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 208(measured from records)
- HNHonduras≈1 in 1.2K
- GTGuatemala≈1 in 1.5K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 250 (measured from records)
- 1 in 208 (inferred from the name graph)
24,563 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Costa Rica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 7 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CR Costa Rica | #53 | 24,563 | 1 in 208 | 25K | Chinchilla | 96 |
| GT Guatemala | #59 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Chinchilla | 50 |
| HN Honduras | #145 | ≈7,900 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Chinchilla | 52 |
| CO Colombia | #738 | ≈5,300 est. | ≈1 in 9.2K | 5 | Chinchilla | 81 |
| VE Venezuela | #621 | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 5.9K | — | Chinchilla | 27 |
| SV El Salvador | #268 | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Chinchilla | 37 |
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 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)
- Rafael Gasset Chinchillab. 1866ESSpanish politician and journalist (1866–1927)
- Carlos Samayoa Chinchillab. 1898GTGuatemalan anthropologist
- Laura Chinchillab. 1959CR46th President of Costa Rica
- Mauricio Monterob. 1963CRnot in their usual nameCosta Rican footballer
- Darwin Pachecob. 1976HNnot in their usual nameHonduran footballer
- Pablo Chinchillab. 1978CRCosta Rican footballer
- Edgar Chinchillab. 1987GTfootballer
- Xavier Quevedob. 1991VEnot in their usual namecyclist
- Priscilla Chinchillab. 2001CRCosta Rican footballer
- María Esperanza Chinchilla VizcaínoESSpanish 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 19 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 25K | #83 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 5 | #111 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 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).
- In which country does Chinchilla have the most bearers?
- 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.
- 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?
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/chinchillaThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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 2026-10-10.