Freitas

surname · Latin script

Meaning: lived on a patch of stony ground, from Port, ipedras) freitas broken stones (LL (petrae) fractae, from the past part, of frangere to break, shatter; cf

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

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

Freitas is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 28th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • BRBrazil≈1 in 149(inferred from the name graph)
  • PTPortugal≈1 in 250
  • UYUruguay1 in 629

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 (inferred from the name graph)

≈1,400,000 people, est.

#408 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

2 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
362 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 149 (inferred from the name graph)

Brazil, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

FreitasLatin(measured from records)
ФрейтасCyrillic(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)

lived on a patch of stony ground, from Port, ipedras) freitas broken stones (LL (petrae) fractae, from the past part, of frangere to break, shatter; cf. Fragoso). Var.: de Freitas.

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)

Freitas 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 Freitas is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#28≈1,400,000 est.≈1 in 149333Freitas251
PT Portugal#36≈41,000 est.≈1 in 250—Freitas193
AO Angola#43≈22,000 est.≈1 in 1.5K2Freitas45
US United States—11,0411 in 30K11KFreitas362
FR France—≈7,700 est.≈1 in 8.9K419Freitas5
VE Venezuela#512≈7,200 est.≈1 in 4K—Freitas62
UY Uruguay#805,3821 in 6295.4KFreitas51

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 — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000). 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)

Freitas is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname5 spellings in the group

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

    Languages: English, Dutch

  • French surname7 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Belgium, United States, Portugal

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Freitãs, Freitäs, Freïtàs, Frëitås

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Freítas

54 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)

Freitas is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Portuguese, lived on a patch of stony ground, from Port, (pedras) freitas broken stones (LL (petrae) fractae, from the past part. oifrangere to break, shatter; cf. Fragoso). Var.: de Freitas.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • stony place

    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)

18501900195020002050Luís de Freitas Branco, b. 1890Diogo de Freitas do Amaral, b. 1941Alcindo, b. 1945Robert Freitas, b. 1952Jaime Freitas, b. 1980Daisy Ryan, b. 1986Marcos Freitas, b. 1988Daniel Corrêa, b. 1994Iury Castilho, b. 1995Fábio Carvalho, 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) Freitas,Dear Freitas, (English)
InformalPrezado(a) Freitas,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 42 sources across 27 countries.

Official registers attesting Freitas
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—1.5M#32
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202011K#3,147
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201011K#3,270
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200010K#3,203
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—5.4K—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1971518—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1991419—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1981389—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)1961189—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)193125—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)195122—
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)194112—

Reference works 4

  • 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)

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 Freitas come from?
lived on a patch of stony ground, from Port, ipedras) freitas broken stones (LL (petrae) fractae, from the past part, of frangere to break, shatter; cf. Fragoso). Var.: de Freitas. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
How do you pronounce Freitas?
A machine transcription gives /fɾejtɐs/ (IPA) for Portuguese.
What does the name Freitas mean?
Recorded meaning: lived on a patch of stony ground, from Port, ipedras) freitas broken stones (LL (petrae) fractae, from the past part, of frangere to break, shatter; cf.
In which country does Freitas have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 1.4 million people named Freitas in Brazil, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled freitas.
How common is the name Freitas?
In the United States, the national register counted 11,041 people named Freitas in 2010, about 1 in 30 thousand residents.
How common is Freitas compared with other names?
In Brazil, Freitas is the 28th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Freitas?

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

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, “Freitas” — the 28th most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Freitas parses inside a full name →