Herrera
surname · Latin script
Meaning: habitational name from villages so called in the provinces of Seville and Badajoz, from a word meaning ‘iron smithy’, ‘blacksmith’s forge’ (a derivative of hierro ‘iron’, Latin ferrum)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ereɾa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Herrera is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Nicaragua it is the 11th most common surname.
- NINicaragua≈1 in 150(inferred from the name graph)
- ECEcuador1 in 211
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 212
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)
- #204 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 498 (measured from records)
- 1 in 117 (inferred from the name graph)
192,711 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Costa Rica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(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)
habitational name from villages so called in the provinces of Seville and Badajoz, from a word meaning ‘iron smithy’, ‘blacksmith’s forge’ (a derivative of hierro ‘iron’, Latin ferrum).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Herrera 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 | #407 | 192,711 | 1 in 1.7K | 193K | Herrera | 498 |
| AR Argentina | #25 | 172,671 | 1 in 263 | 173K | Herrera | 162 |
| CO Colombia | #27 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 303 | 110 | Herrera | 220 |
| VE Venezuela | #30 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 212 | 1K | Herrera | 131 |
| PE Peru | #40 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 319 | 304K | Herrera | 141 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 80,252 | 1 in 211 | 80K | Herrera | 107 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 43,670 | 1 in 117 | 44K | — | 128 |
| NI Nicaragua | #11 | ≈41,000 est. | ≈1 in 150 | — | Herrera | 68 |
| SV El Salvador | #50 | ≈25,000 est. | ≈1 in 256 | 26K | Herrera | 94 |
192,711 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; RENIEC — DNI population names; asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); the co-datosgov-candidates register; El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); INEC — civil registry names; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) 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)
Herrera is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
habitational name from the Gascon form of Ferriere, a place in Pyrenees-Atlantique. The place name is derived from Latina/erraria ‘iron-mine’, ‘iron-forge’.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Jose Joaquin, Mexican general and
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, politician; province, Panama
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Croatian, španjolski renesansni pjesnik ( Pjesan o pobjedi kod Lepanta )
as a wordHrvatski jezični portal (HJP) dictionary export
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 Antonio Páezb. 1790ESnot in their usual namepresident of Venezuela (1790-1873)
- Helenio Herrerab. 1910ARArgentine-French football player and manager (1910-1997)
- Alberto Spencerb. 1937ECnot in their usual nameEcuadorian footballer (1937-2025)
- Carolina Herrerab. 1939VEVenezuelan-American fashion designer
- Jean Renob. 1948FRnot in their usual nameSpanish-French actor
- Miguel Herrerab. 1968MXMexican association football player and manager (born 1968)
- Alfonso Herrerab. 1983MXMexican actor and former singer (born 1983)
- Héctor Morenob. 1988MXnot in their usual nameMexican association football player
- Ander Herrerab. 1989ESSpanish association football player
- Héctor Herrerab. 1990MXMexican association football player
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 48 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PE Peru | RENIEC — DNI population names | 2019 | 304K | #26 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 193K | #129 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 187K | #131 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 173K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 141K | #175 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 80K | #36 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | — | 80K | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 44K | #44 |
| SV El Salvador | El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived) | — | 26K | #53 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 1995 | 1.6K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2009 | 1.5K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2007 | 1.4K | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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 Herrera mean, and where does it come from?
- habitational name from villages so called in the provinces of Seville and Badajoz, from a word meaning ‘iron smithy’, ‘blacksmith’s forge’ (a derivative of hierro ‘iron’, Latin ferrum). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Herrera?
- A machine transcription gives /ereɾa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What are other forms of the name Herrera?
- In the etymology graph, Ferreira is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Herrera have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 193 thousand people named Herrera, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled herrera.
- Where is Herrera most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Herrera is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 117 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Herrera?
- In the United States, the national register counted 192,711 people named Herrera in 2010, about 1 in 1.7 thousand residents.
- How common is Herrera compared with other names?
- In the United States, Herrera is the 407th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Herrera?
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/herreraThe 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, “Herrera” — the 407th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.