Moles
surname · Latin script
Meaning: 2. Catalan: habitation name from any of various minor places named Moles, from the plural of mola (see Mola)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈmoʊɫz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Moles is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 120K(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 23K
- IEIreland≈1 in 59K
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 Moles 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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 250 (measured from records)
- 1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
≈18,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Spain
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)
2. Catalan: habitation name from any of various minor places named Moles, from the plural of mola (see Mola).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Moles 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 79K | — | Moles | 2 |
| US United States | 2,778 | 1 in 120K | 2.8K | Moles | 250 |
| ES Spain | 2,141 | 1 in 23K | 2.1K | Moles | 58 |
| NL Netherlands | 1,433as Mols | 1 in 12K | 1.4K | — | 6 |
| BE Belgium | 1,115as Mols | 1 in 11K | 1.1K | — | 2 |
| DK Denmark | 160as Mols | 1 in 37K | 160 | — | — |
| IE Ireland | ≈87 est. | ≈1 in 59K | — | Moles | 22 |
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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); CBG Familienamenbank — Dutch surname bearer counts (GBA/BRP 2007); Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). 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)
Moles is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Catalan, plural of mola (“millstone”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Galician, second-person singular present indicative of mulir
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Danish, indefinite genitive singular of mole
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Portuguese, masculine/feminine plural of mole
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latin, multitude, mass (of material)
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)
- Pere-Pasqual Molesb. 1741ESpainter (1741-1797)
- Ramón Alabern y Molesb. 1811ESengraver and daguerreotypist (1811–1888)
- Joan Moles i Ormellab. 1871ESSpanish jurist, lawyer and politician (1871-1945)
- Enrique Moles Ormellab. 1883ESSpanish scientist (1883-1953)
- James Molesb. 1885GBfootballer (1885-1911)
- Margot Molesb. 1910ESSpanish alpine skier (1910-1987)
- Osvaldo Molesb. 1913BRBrazilian journalist, radio announcer and lyricist
- Abraham Molesb. 1920FRScientist, professor (1920–1992)
- John Molesb. 1949GBEnglish university lecturer
- David MolesUSUS science Fiction author, mainly of short fiction
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 22 sources across 12 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 2.8K | #11,355 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 2.7K | #10,696 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 2.6K | #11,513 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 2.1K | #2,295 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 2.1K | #2,295 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 5 | #98,738 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 3 | #80,370 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 Moles mean, and where does it come from?
- 2. Catalan: habitation name from any of various minor places named Moles, from the plural of mola (see Mola). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Moles?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈmoʊɫz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Moles have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 18 thousand people named Moles in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled moles.
- Where is Moles most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Moles is densest in Spain — about 1 in 23 thousand people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Moles?
- In the United States, the national register counted 2,778 people named Moles in 2010, about 1 in 120 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Moles?
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/molesThe 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, “Moles”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.