Gallegos
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: habitational name from any of the numerous places named Gallegos, originally denoting a place settled by ‘people from Galicia’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/gaʎeɣos/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Gallegos is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Guinea-Bissau it is the 5th most common surname.
- ECEcuador1 in 1.2K(measured from records)
- CLChile≈1 in 1.2K
- PEPeru≈1 in 1.7K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 386 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 124 (inferred from the name graph)
68,373 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Guinea-Bissau, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
habitational name from any of the numerous places named Gallegos, originally denoting a place settled by ‘people from Galicia’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Gallegos is read(measured from records)
Gallegos is one spelling over 2 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.
- Spanish66%
habitational name from any of the numerous places named Gallegos, originally denoting a place settled by ‘people from Galicia’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
masculine plural of gallego
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English27%
river, Argentina
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Gallegos 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 68,373 | 1 in 4.9K | 68K | Gallegos | 386 |
| PE Peru | #308 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Gallegos | 79 |
| GW Guinea-Bissau | #5 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 124 | — | Gallegos | 3 |
| CL Chile | #314 | ≈15,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | 1 | Gallegos | 108 |
| EC Ecuador | #286 | 13,874 | 1 in 1.2K | 14K | Gallegos | 67 |
| SV El Salvador | #339 | ≈1,800 est. | ≈1 in 3.5K | — | Gallegos | 38 |
68,373 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); INEC — civil registry 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Gallegos 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.
In Asturian, masculine plural of gallegu
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)
- José Rafael de Gallegos y Alvaradob. 1784CRPresident of Costa Rica (1784-1835)
- José Manuel Gallegosb. 1815USAmerican politician (1815-1875)
- José Gallegos y Arnosab. 1857ESSpanish painter, architect and sculptor
- Rómulo Gallegosb. 1884VEVenezuelan politician and writer (1884–1969)
- Raúl Alcaláb. 1964MXnot in their usual nameroad bicycle racer
- Frank Gallegosb. 1970USAmerican actor
- Julián Sánchezb. 1988MXnot in their usual nameMexican diver
- Felipe Gallegosb. 1991CLChilean footballer
- Giovanny Gallegosb. 1991MXMexican professional baseball pitcher
- Gustavo Cuéllarb. 1992COnot in their usual nameColombian 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 33 sources across 21 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- What does the name Gallegos mean, and where does it come from?
- habitational name from any of the numerous places named Gallegos, originally denoting a place settled by ‘people from Galicia’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Gallegos?
- A machine transcription gives /gaʎeɣos/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Gallegos have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 68 thousand people named Gallegos, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled gallegos.
- How common is the name Gallegos?
- In the United States, the national register counted 68,373 people named Gallegos in 2010, about 1 in 4.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Gallegos compared with other names?
- In Guinea-Bissau, Gallegos is the 5th most common surname of 221 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Gallegos?
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/gallegosThe 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, “Gallegos” — the 5th most common surname in Guinea-Bissau. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.