Fortes

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Portuguese: masculine/feminine plural of forte

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

Fortes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Cape Verde it is the 9th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 4.7K(inferred from the name graph)
  • BRBrazil1 in 5K
  • ESSpain1 in 12K

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)

42,759 people

Sources
179 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 1.7K (inferred from the name graph)

Cape Verde, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

masculine/feminine plural of forte

Sources 1

  • kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.

How Fortes is read(measured from records)

Fortes is one spelling over 4 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.

  • Portuguese59%

    masculine/feminine plural of forte

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

  • English17%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Fortes in English.

  • Spanish13%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Fortes in Spanish.

  • French6.7%

    feminine plural of fort

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

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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)

Fortes 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 Fortes is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#32742,7591 in 5K43KFortes151
PH Philippines—≈6,700 est.≈1 in 16K—Fortes49
ES Spain—4,0951 in 12K4.1KFortes102
AO Angola#170≈3,600 est.≈1 in 9K2Fortes26
PT Portugal#321≈2,200 est.≈1 in 4.7K—Fortes79
CV Cape Verde#9≈350 est.≈1 in 1.7K8Fortes40

42,759 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); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); CNE — Listas concorrentes (Eleicoes Legislativas 2026); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names. 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)

Fortes is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Philippines, Belgium

    Also written Fortès, Fortés, Förtës

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Fortés

  • German surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, Netherlands, Spain

    Also written Foertes, Förtes

  • Hindi surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Philippines, Spain

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Fortés

52 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)

Fortes 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.

  • strong

    as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…

  • In Latin, nominative/accusative/vocative masculine/feminine plural of fortis

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

  • In Swedish, indefinite genitive singular of forte

    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)

1900195020002050Agostinho Fortes Filho, b. 1901Meyer Fortes, b. 1906Corsino Fortes, b. 1933Carlos Alhinho, b. 1949Paco Fortes, b. 1955Marco Fortes, b. 1982Hernâni Jorge Santos Fortes, b. 1991Steven Fortes, b. 1992Alvin Fortes, b. 1994Gabriel Pec, b. 2001

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 27 sources across 18 countries.

Official registers attesting Fortes
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—43K#483
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—4.1K#1,275
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—4.1K#1,275
CV Cape VerdeCNE — Listas concorrentes (Eleicoes Legislativas 2026)20268#11
AO AngolaWikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names—2#76

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 Fortes mean, and where does it come from?
masculine/feminine plural of forte Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
In which country does Fortes have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 43 thousand people named Fortes, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fortes.
How common is the name Fortes?
In Brazil, the national register counted 42,759 people named Fortes, about 1 in 5.0 thousand residents.
How common is Fortes compared with other names?
In Brazil, Fortes is the 327th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Fortes?

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

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, “Fortes” — the 327th most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Fortes parses inside a full name →