Molina
surname · Latin script
Meaning: person from any of various places in Spain named Molina
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/molina/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Molina is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country, where it is the 30th most common surname.
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 184(inferred from the name graph)
- ECEcuador1 in 272
- ARArgentina1 in 290
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.
- Argentina (measured from records)
- #290 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 474 (measured from records)
- 1 in 170 (inferred from the name graph)
156,655 people
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)
One other spelling is 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)
person from any of various places in Spain named Molina
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Molina 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 | #30 | 156,655 | 1 in 290 | 157K | Molina | 158 |
| ES Spain | #29 | 125,316 | 1 in 399 | 125K | Molina | 235 |
| CO Colombia | #57 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 439 | 68 | Molina | 201 |
| US United States | #752 | 96,979 | 1 in 3.4K | 98K | Molina | 474 |
| VE Venezuela | #48 | ≈96,000 est. | ≈1 in 298 | — | Molina | 114 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 62,141 | 1 in 272 | 62K | Molina | 100 |
| SV El Salvador | #38 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 184 | 38K | Molina | 94 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 29,929 | 1 in 170 | 30K | — | 113 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 13,156 | 1 in 257 | 13K | — | 65 |
156,655 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); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Molina 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.
habitational name from any of numerous places named Molina, in particular the one in Guadalajara province.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
miller
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In English, city, Chile
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In German, Juan Gris, spa nischer Malerund Grafiker (19./20. Jh.); Juan
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Iloko, a common surname from Spanish, equivalent to Spanish Molina, generally concentrated in Ilocos Sur
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)
- Rafael Leónidas Trujillob. 1891DOnot in their usual namePresident of the Dominican Republic (1891-1961)
- Antonio Tejerob. 1932ESnot in their usual nameSpanish Lieutenant-Colonel (1932–2026)
- Mario Molinab. 1943MXMexican chemical engineer (1943–2020)
- Otto Pérez Molinab. 1950GTPresident of Guatemala (2012-2015)
- Alfred Molinab. 1953GBBritish actor
- Ángela Molinab. 1955ESSpanish actress
- Adrian Molinab. 1985USAmerican screenwriter
- Esteban Granerob. 1987ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer
- Natalia de Molinab. 1990ESSpanish actress
- Nahuel Molina Lucerob. 1998ARArgentine 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 60 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 157K | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 125K | #30 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 125K | #30 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 98K | #316 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 97K | #320 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 70K | #417 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 62K | #51 |
| SV El Salvador | El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived) | — | 38K | #37 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 30K | #69 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 13K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 532 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 68 | #50 |
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 Molina mean, and where does it come from?
- person from any of various places in Spain named Molina Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Molina?
- A machine transcription gives /molina/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Molina have the most bearers?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 157 thousand people named Molina, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled molina.
- Where is Molina most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Molina is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 170 people — even though Argentina holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Molina?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 156,655 people named Molina, about 1 in 290 residents.
- How common is Molina compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Molina is the 30th most common surname of 398,256 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Molina?
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/molinaThe 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, “Molina” — the 30th most common surname in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.