Cueva
surname · Latin script
Meaning: cave
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/kweβa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cueva is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Peru than in any other country.
- PEPeru≈1 in 727(inferred from the name graph)
- ECEcuador1 in 757
- DODominican Republic≈1 in 5.1K
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.
- Peru (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 261 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 727 (inferred from the name graph)
≈44,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Peru, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
cave
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cueva 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PE Peru | #101 | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 727 | — | Cueva | 108 |
| EC Ecuador | #186 | 22,326 | 1 in 757 | 22K | Cueva | 85 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Cueva | 59 |
| AR Argentina | #960 | 5,263 | 1 in 8.6K | 5.3K | Cueva | 65 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈4,400 est. | ≈1 in 60K | — | Cueva | 7 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #316 | ≈2,100 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | — | Cueva | 23 |
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: INEC — civil registry names; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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)
Cueva 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.
Ciudad de Mexico
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
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)
- Bartolomé de la Cueva y Toledob. 1499ESSpanish cardinal
- Isidro Ayorab. 1879ECnot in their usual namePresident of Ecuador (1926 - 1931)
- Jorge de la Cuevab. 1884ESSpanish playwright
- Julio Cuevab. 1897CUCuban musician (1897-1975)
- Teófilo Maguiña Cuevab. 1923PEPeruvian writer
- Dionisio Cueva Gonzálezb. 1924ESSpanish piarist (1924-2015)
- Agustin Cuevab. 1937ECEcuadorian sociologist (1937-1992)
- Álvaro Cuevab. 1968MXMexican television critic and journalist
- Christian Cuevab. 1991PEPeruvian association football player
- Fiorella Cuevab. 1998PEPeruvian weightlifter
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 22 sources across 13 countries.
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 Cueva mean, and where does it come from?
- cave Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Cueva?
- A machine transcription gives /kweβa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What are other forms of the name Cueva?
- In the etymology graph, Cova is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Cueva have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 44 thousand people named Cueva in Peru, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cueva.
- How common is the name Cueva?
- In Ecuador, the national register counted 22,326 people named Cueva in 2024, about 1 in 757 residents.
- How common is Cueva compared with other names?
- In Peru, Cueva is the 101st most common surname of 173,371 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cueva?
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/cuevaThe 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, “Cueva” — the 101st most common surname in Peru. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.