Contreras
surname · Latin script
Meaning: province of Burgos. The placename is derived from LL contraria surrounding area, region (from the prep, contra opposite, against, hard by)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kontrɛras/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Contreras is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Venezuela than in any other country, where it is the 29th most common surname.
- CLChile≈1 in 208(inferred from the name graph)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 212
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 376
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.
- Venezuela (inferred from the name graph)
- #292 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 447 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 208 (inferred from the name graph)
≈140,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Chile, est.
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)
province of Burgos. The placename is derived from LL contraria surrounding area, region (from the prep, contra opposite, against, hard by). Vars.; Con(ner)ry. Dims.: O’Conoran, O’Coneran, Conran, Condron, Condrin (Gael. O Conarain).
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Contreras 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VE Venezuela | #29 | ≈140,000 est. | ≈1 in 212 | 653 | Contreras | 121 |
| US United States | #654 | 130,164 | 1 in 2.6K | 130K | Contreras | 447 |
| CL Chile | #29 | ≈87,000 est. | ≈1 in 208 | — | Contreras | 175 |
| CO Colombia | #77 | ≈84,000 est. | ≈1 in 587 | 43 | Contreras | 184 |
| AR Argentina | #116 | 64,389 | 1 in 706 | 64K | Contreras | 119 |
| PE Peru | #82 | ≈58,000 est. | ≈1 in 551 | — | Contreras | 110 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #47 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 409 | — | Contreras | 87 |
| SV El Salvador | #66 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 376 | 18K | Contreras | 68 |
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: asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); the co-datosgov-candidates register; El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived). 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)
Contreras 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 Filipino, a surname from Spanish, principally found in Batangas, Bulacan and Quezon
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Cebuano, a surname from Spanish, the 287th most common in the Philippines
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, second-person singular future of contrer
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)
- Pedro de Alvaradob. 1486ESnot in their usual nameSpanish conquistador, explorer and condottiero
- Eleazar López Contrerasb. 1883VEPresident of Venezuela (1935–1941)
- Ramón Rivasb. 1966USnot in their usual namePuerto Rican basketball player (born 1966)
- Pedro Contrerasb. 1972ESSpanish footballer
- Pablo Contrerasb. 1978CLChilean footballer
- Maricona Contrerasb. 1981MXMexican “Actress” (born 1971)
- Kokeb. 1983ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer (born 1983)
- Ana Brenda Contrerasb. 1986MXMexican actress and singer
- Willson Contrerasb. 1992VEVenezuelan professional baseball catcher
- Anthony Contrerasb. 2000CRCosta Rican footballer
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 42 sources across 27 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 130K | #229 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 125K | #239 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 93K | #299 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 64K | — |
| SV El Salvador | El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived) | — | 18K | #73 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 43 | #73 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- 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)
- 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 Contreras come from?
- province of Burgos. The placename is derived from LL contraria surrounding area, region (from the prep, contra opposite, against, hard by). Vars.; Con(ner)ry. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Contreras?
- A machine transcription gives /kontrɛras/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Contreras mean?
- Recorded meaning: province of Burgos. The placename is derived from LL contraria surrounding area, region (from the prep, contra opposite, against, hard by).
- In which country does Contreras have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 135 thousand people named Contreras in Venezuela, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled contreras.
- How common is the name Contreras?
- In the United States, the national register counted 130,164 people named Contreras in 2010, about 1 in 2.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Contreras compared with other names?
- In Venezuela, Contreras is the 29th most common surname of 83,461 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Contreras?
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/contrerasThe 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, “Contreras” — the 29th most common surname in Venezuela. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.