Fonseca

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: someone who lived by a spring that dried up during the summer months, from Romance descendants of L fans spring, well (see Font) + sicca (fem.) dry. Cogn.: Prov.: Fonseque

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/fõsekɐ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Fonseca is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 61st most common surname.

rarermore common
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 151(measured from records)
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 300
  • BRBrazil1 in 342

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.

Brazil (measured from records)

618,921 people

#607 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
343 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 151 (inferred from the name graph)

Costa Rica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

FonsecaLatin(measured from records)
ФонсекаCyrillic(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)

someone who lived by a spring that dried up during the summer months, from Romance descendants of L fans spring, well (see Font) + sicca (fem.) dry. Cogn.: Prov.: Fonseque. Dims.: Prov.: Fontel(le), Fontin. Cat.: Fontelles.

Sources 1

  • A dictionary of surnames

Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.

How Fonseca is read(measured from records)

Fonseca is one spelling over 3 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.

  • Portuguese57%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Fonseca in Portuguese.

  • Spanish29%

    someone who lived by a spring that dried up during the summer months, from Romance descendants of L fans spring, well (see Font) + sicca (fem.) dry. Cogn.: Prov.: Fonseque. Dims.: Prov.: Fontel(le), Fontin. Cat.: Fontelles.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • English7.1%

    Gulf of, Cen. America

    as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names

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)

Fonseca 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 Fonseca is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#61618,9211 in 342619KFonseca244
CO Colombia#144≈42,000 est.≈1 in 1.2K46Fonseca158
PT Portugal#44≈34,000 est.≈1 in 300—Fonseca187
CR Costa Rica#4033,7801 in 15134KFonseca114
US United States—25,8631 in 13K26KFonseca343
NI Nicaragua#79≈11,000 est.≈1 in 583—Fonseca47
UY Uruguay—5,0871 in 6665.1K—55

618,921 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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: IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; the co-datosgov-candidates register; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)

Fonseca is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname12 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Fonsêca, Fonséca, Fönsëcä, Fonsèca, Fónsécá

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Portugal

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Fonséca, Fonsêca, Föňšĕca

  • a separate name4 spellings in the group

    Also written Fonsêca, Fônseca, Fonséca

  • English surname20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Australia, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: English, Lao, Spanish

    Also written Fonseka, Fönsëcä, ฟอนเซกา, ฟอนเซก้า, Fónseka

  • Italian surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Spain, Peru

    Also written Fönsëcä, Fonsêca

  • Finnish surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Switzerland

    Languages: Finnish, Estonian

    Also written Fonsêca

57 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.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

192019401960198020002020Rubem Fonseca, b. 1925Jorge Carlos Fonseca, b. 1950Daniel Fonseca, b. 1969Catia Fonseca, b. 1969Catarina Furtado, b. 1972Paulo Fonseca, b. 1973Rolando Fonseca, b. 1974Lyndsy Fonseca, b. 1987Jorge Fonseca, b. 1992Gabriel Veron, b. 2002

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)

FormalPrezado(a) Fonseca,Dear Fonseca, (English)
InformalPrezado(a) Fonseca,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 52 sources across 33 countries.

Official registers attesting Fonseca
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—619K#78
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—34K#62
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202026K#1,309
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201026K#1,363
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200020K#1,682
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—5.1K—
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—46#70
CR Costa RicaTSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration)———
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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 Fonseca mean, and where does it come from?
someone who lived by a spring that dried up during the summer months, from Romance descendants of L fans spring, well (see Font) + sicca (fem.) dry. Cogn.: Prov.: Fonseque. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
How do you pronounce Fonseca?
A machine transcription gives /fõsekɐ/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
In which country does Fonseca have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 619 thousand people named Fonseca, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fonseca.
Where is Fonseca most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Fonseca is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 151 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Fonseca?
In Brazil, the national register counted 618,921 people named Fonseca, about 1 in 342 residents.
How common is Fonseca compared with other names?
In Brazil, Fonseca is the 61st most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Fonseca?

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

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, “Fonseca” — the 61st most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Fonseca parses inside a full name →