Leiva
surname · Latin script
Meaning: inces of Logrono and Murcia
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/leiβa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Leiva is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country, where it is the 87th most common surname.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 432(measured from records)
- CLChile≈1 in 525
- NINicaragua≈1 in 535
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Leiva itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Argentina (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 305 (measured from records)
- 1 in 432 (inferred from the name graph)
77,501 people
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)
inces of Logrono and Murcia. The placename is early re¬ corded in the form Libia; it is of uncertain etymology. Lenchenko see Alexander Leivers see Lever Leneveu see Neveu Leivick see Levi Lenfestey see Vaisey Leivik see Levick
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Leiva 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | #87 | 77,501 | 1 in 587 | 78K | Leiva | 122 |
| CL Chile | #54 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 525 | 1 | Leiva | 149 |
| US United States | — | 26,153as Leyva | 1 in 13K | 26K | Leiva | 305 |
| PE Peru | #281 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 2K | — | Leiva | 75 |
| HN Honduras | #83 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 644 | — | Leiva | 59 |
| PY Paraguay | #113 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 602 | — | Leiva | 38 |
| CR Costa Rica | #104 | 11,806 | 1 in 432 | 12K | Leiva | 92 |
| NI Nicaragua | #73 | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 535 | — | Leiva | 39 |
77,501 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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); SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; 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)
Leiva 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.
In Spanish, habitational name a place called Leiva, chiefly the one in La Rioja province and to a lesser extent the one in Murcia.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In Galician, stave (of a barrel or cask)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Estonian, genitive singular of leib
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)
- Ponciano Leivab. 1821HNPresident of Honduras (1821-1896)
- Salvador Dubois Leivab. 1939NINicaraguan footballer (1939-2015)
- Ángel Comizzob. 1962ARnot in their usual nameArgentine footballer
- Dinio Garcíab. 1972CUnot in their usual nameCuban singer and pornographic actor
- Natalia Verbekeb. 1975ARnot in their usual nameArgentine-Spanish actress
- Marvin Gonzálezb. 1982SVnot in their usual nameSalvadoran footballer
- Lucas Leivab. 1987BRBrazilian association football player (born 1987)
- Felipe Gutiérrezb. 1990CLnot in their usual nameChilean footballer
- David Rugamasb. 1990SVnot in their usual nameassociation football player
- Felipe Gallegosb. 1991CLnot in their usual nameChilean 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 39 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 78K | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 12K | #149 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 9.1K | #3,820 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.2K | #4,335 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 5.5K | #5,760 |
| 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 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Lietuvių kalbos institutas — Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Lithuanian surname dictionary)
- 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 Leiva come from?
- inces of Logrono and Murcia. The placename is early re¬ corded in the form Libia; it is of uncertain etymology. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Leiva?
- A machine transcription gives /leiβa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Leiva mean?
- Recorded meaning: inces of Logrono and Murcia.
- In which country does Leiva have the most bearers?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 78 thousand people named Leiva, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled leiva.
- Where is Leiva most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Leiva is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 432 people — even though Argentina holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Leiva?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 77,501 people named Leiva, about 1 in 587 residents.
- How common is Leiva compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Leiva is the 87th most common surname of 398,256 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Leiva?
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/leivaThe 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, “Leiva” — the 87th most common surname in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.