Mata

surname · Latin script

Meaning, in Spanish: Vars.: Sp.: Matas. Port.: Matos. Both these forms are also found as Jewish surnames, but the reasons for their adoption are unclear. Dim.: Sp.: Matilla

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

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

Mata is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In Costa Rica it is the 80th most common surname.

rarermore common
  • CRCosta Rica1 in 308(measured from records)
  • VEVenezuela≈1 in 637
  • SVEl Salvador≈1 in 1.1K

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 Mata 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.

Brazil (measured from records)

510,309 named Mota

#896 (measured from records)

of 19M surnames

5 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
389 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 308 (inferred from the name graph)

Costa Rica

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

MataLatin(measured from records)
เมธาThai(measured from records)
ΜάταGreek(measured from records)
조세형Hangul(measured from records)
మాతTelugu(measured from records)

10 other spellings are counted as the same name:

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 any of numerous places in Portugal and Spain named Mata, from mata ‘wood’, ‘forest’.

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

How Mata is read(measured from records)

Mata is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.

  • Spanish63%

    Vars.: Sp.: Matas. Port.: Matos. Both these forms are also found as Jewish surnames, but the reasons for their adoption are unclear. Dim.: Sp.: Matilla. and Shetland islands, and was formerly used as a given name there; it has been supposed to derive from a Scandi¬ navian form of Matthew.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

    name for someone who lived by a plantation of trees, OSp. mata (of uncertain origin). Vars.: Sp.: Matas. Port.: Matos. Both these forms are also found as Jewish surnames, but the reasons for their adoption are unclear. Dim.: Sp.; Matilla. Matalis see Maites

    as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles

  • English18%

    A respectful title for a female spiritual leader or for a wife, mother, or grandmother of a male spiritual leader.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Portuguese8.8%

    jungle, woods, forest

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

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)

Mata 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 Mata is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
BR Brazil#212510,309as Mota1 in 415510KMata157
US United States—48,1201 in 6.9K48KMata389
VE Venezuela#114≈45,000 est.≈1 in 637—Mata109
PH Philippines#386≈33,000 est.≈1 in 3.3K—Mata75
ES Spain#18420,6121 in 2.4K21KMata178
CR Costa Rica#8016,5681 in 30817KMata97
DO Dominican Republic#165≈5,900 est.≈1 in 1.8K—Mata46
SV El Salvador#187≈5,700 est.≈1 in 1.1K—Mata51

510,309 people counted by IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname), counting the spelling mota. 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 — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Mata is also recorded as 7 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname23 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, Canada

    Languages: English, German, Dutch

    Also written Mâţă, Maťa, Matà, Māta, Måtä

  • Hindi surname10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Spain, Pakistan

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Màtà, Mātā, Mätã, Màta, Maťa

  • a separate name7 spellings in the group

    Also written Mâță, Matà, Mātā, Mâţà, Máta

  • Vietnamese surname3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Spain, Vietnam

    Languages: Vietnamese, Khmer

    Also written Matã

  • Arabic surname5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Egypt, Spain, Saudi Arabia

    Also written M-Ata, Màtà, Mãtã, Mätä

  • Japanese surname2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Japan, United States, India, Spain

    Also written Mätä

  • Bangla surname38 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, United States

    Also written Mat, মত, Mather, মৃত, মাতা

70 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)

Mata 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.

  • habitational name from any of numerous places in Portugal and Spain named Mata, from mata ‘wood’, ‘forest’.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • from a pet form of the personal name Mate (see Matthew).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

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)

120014001600180020002200Karni Mata, b. 1387Antonio Aranda Mata, b. 1888Pedro Vargas, b. 1906Eduardo Mata, b. 1942Mario Suárez, b. 1987Víctor Sánchez Mata, b. 1987Juan Mata, b. 1988Jaime Mata Arnaiz, b. 1988Clinton Mata, b. 1992Álvaro Zamora, 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)

FormalEstimado/a Mata,Dear Mata, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Mata,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 65 sources across 37 countries.

Official registers attesting Mata
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201048K#724
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202047K#715
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200035K#907
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—21K#264
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—21K#264
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—17K#118
CR Costa RicaTSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration)———

Reference works 8

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 Mata come from?
habitational name from any of numerous places in Portugal and Spain named Mata, from mata ‘wood’, ‘forest’. Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Mata?
A machine transcription gives /mata/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What does the name Mata mean?
In Spanish, Vars.: Sp.: Matas. Port.: Matos. Both these forms are also found as Jewish surnames, but the reasons for their adoption are unclear. Dim.: Sp.: Matilla.
In which country does Mata have the most bearers?
In Brazil, the national register counted about 510 thousand people named Mota, more than in any other country we hold.
Where is Mata most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Mata is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 308 people — even though Brazil holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Mata?
In the United States, the national register counted 48,120 people named Mata in 2010, about 1 in 6.9 thousand residents.
How common is Mata compared with other names?
In Brazil, Mata is the 212th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Mata?

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

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, “Mata” — the 212th most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Mata parses inside a full name →