Moya
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: variant spelling of the habitational name from Moia in Barcelona province, named in Late Latin as Modianus ‘(estate) of Modius' (a personal name derived from Latin modus ‘measure’)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/moʝa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Moya is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 87th most common surname.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 337(measured from records)
- CLChile≈1 in 885
- ESSpain1 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). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Spain (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 335 (measured from records)
- 1 in 337 (inferred from the name graph)
45,483 people
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)
- Moiain(measured from records)
- Latinmodus(measured from records)
variant spelling of the habitational name from Moia in Barcelona province, named in Late Latin as Modianus ‘(estate) of Modius' (a personal name derived from Latin modus ‘measure’).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Moya is read(measured from records)
Moya is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 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.
- Spanish74%
variant spelling of the habitational name from Moia in Barcelona province, named in Late Latin as Modianus ‘(estate) of Modius' (a personal name derived from Latin modus ‘measure’).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
habitational name from Moya, in Cuenca, or from places so named Valencia, Lugo, and the Canaries.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
- English13%
Flowing mud associated with a volcanic eruption (especially in South America), formed when snow or a lake near a volcano is disrupted, or when rain or steam mixes with soil or ash during an eruption.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
Moya 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | #87 | 45,483 | 1 in 1.1K | 45K | Moya | 203 |
| AR Argentina | #252 | 25,103 | 1 in 1.8K | 25K | Moya | 98 |
| CL Chile | #97 | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 885 | 1 | Moya | 125 |
| VE Venezuela | #271 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Moya | 66 |
| US United States | — | 18,071 | 1 in 18K | 18K | Moya | 335 |
| CR Costa Rica | #90 | 15,121 | 1 in 337 | 15K | Moya | 90 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 11,209 | 1 in 1.5K | 11K | Moya | 59 |
| BO Bolivia | — | ≈7,700 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Moya | 43 |
45,483 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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: SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; INEC — civil registry 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)
Moya 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.
Moyav. Mwyaf Moyle(s) v. Moel
as a nameWelsh Surnames
In wyy, the brain; brains as a body part (takes preposed possessive marking, in contrast to brains as food)
as a wordAustronesian Comparative Dictionary (ACD), CLDF v2.0
In raw, colour.
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)
- Juli Mirab. 1949ESnot in their usual nameSpanish actor
- Jorge Sampaolib. 1960ARnot in their usual nameArgentine professional football manager and former player
- Miguel Alcubierreb. 1964MXnot in their usual nameMexican theoretical physicist (born 1964)
- Randall Brenesb. 1983CRnot in their usual nameCosta Rican footballer
- Miguel Ángel Moyáb. 1984ESSpanish footballer
- Esmeralda Moyab. 1985ESSpanish actress
- Marc Torrejónb. 1986ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer
- Sergej Moyab. 1987DEGerman actor and screenwriter
- Marta Torrejónb. 1990ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer
- Borja Mayoralb. 1997ESnot in their usual nameSpanish 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 61 sources across 34 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 45K | #100 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 45K | #100 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 25K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 18K | #2,001 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 18K | #1,978 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 15K | #130 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 14K | #2,451 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 11K | #394 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 76 | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
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 Moya mean, and where does it come from?
- variant spelling of the habitational name from Moia in Barcelona province, named in Late Latin as Modianus ‘(estate) of Modius' (a personal name derived from Latin modus ‘measure’). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
- How do you pronounce Moya?
- A machine transcription gives /moʝa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Moya have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 45 thousand people named Moya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled moya.
- Where is Moya most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Moya is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 337 people — even though Spain holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Moya?
- In Spain, the national register counted 45,483 people named Moya, about 1 in 1.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Moya compared with other names?
- In Spain, Moya is the 87th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Moya?
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/moyaThe 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, “Moya” — the 87th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.