Lacayo
surname · Latin script
Meaning: occupational name from lacayo ‘foot soldier’ or ‘lackey’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/lakaʝo/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Lacayo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nicaragua than in any other country, where it is the 88th most common surname.
- NINicaragua≈1 in 662(inferred from the name graph)
- CRCosta Rica1 in 2K
- HNHonduras≈1 in 15K
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.
- Nicaragua (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 237 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 662 (inferred from the name graph)
≈9,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Nicaragua, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
occupational name from lacayo ‘foot soldier’ or ‘lackey’.
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Lacayo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NI Nicaragua | #88 | ≈9,400 est. | ≈1 in 662 | — | Lacayo | 73 |
| CR Costa Rica | #218 | 2,490 | 1 in 2K | 2.5K | Lacayo | 57 |
| US United States | — | 2,299 | 1 in 145K | 2.3K | Lacayo | 237 |
| PK Pakistan | — | ≈780 est. | ≈1 in 299K | — | Lacayo | 1 |
| HN Honduras | #472 | ≈600 est. | ≈1 in 15K | — | Lacayo | 22 |
| GT Guatemala | — | ≈590 est. | ≈1 in 29K | — | Lacayo | 26 |
| SV El Salvador | #906 | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 37K | — | Lacayo | 15 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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)
Lacayo 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 Spanish, lackey
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)
- Justo Arosemena Lacayob. 1929PAColombian artist (1929-2000)
- Arnoldo Alemánb. 1946NInot in their usual namePresident of Nicaragua from 1997 to 2002
- Alejandro Lacayob. 1951Nicaraguan businessman
- Ernesto Lacayob. 1989USAmerican-football player (1989-)
- Maria Lourdes Chamorro-LacayoUSAmerican entomologist
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 13 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 2.5K | #332 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.3K | #12,709 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.3K | #13,267 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 1.9K | #14,212 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 Lacayo mean, and where does it come from?
- occupational name from lacayo ‘foot soldier’ or ‘lackey’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Lacayo?
- A machine transcription gives /lakaʝo/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Lacayo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 9.4 thousand people named Lacayo in Nicaragua, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled lacayo.
- How common is the name Lacayo?
- In Costa Rica, the national register counted 2,490 people named Lacayo, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Lacayo compared with other names?
- In Nicaragua, Lacayo is the 88th most common surname of 5,756 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Lacayo?
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/lacayoThe 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, “Lacayo” — the 88th most common surname in Nicaragua. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.