Nieves
surname · Latin script
Meaning: las Nieves ‘Mary of the Snows’, given particularly to chil¬ dren born on 5 August, on which date the Virgin allegedly once caused it to snow in Rome
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/njeβes/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nieves is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Uruguay it is the 97th most common surname.
- UYUruguay1 in 585(measured from records)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 823
- COColombia≈1 in 4.3K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 378 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 191 (inferred from the name graph)
34,896 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Puerto Rico, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
las Nieves ‘Mary of the Snows’, given particularly to chil¬ dren born on 5 August, on which date the Virgin allegedly once caused it to snow in Rome. It is possible that the sur¬ name also derives from a nickname with the same meaning as Nevado. Cogn.: Port.: Neves.
Sources 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Nieves, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nieves 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 34,896 | 1 in 9.5K | 36K | Nieves | 378 |
| VE Venezuela | #151 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 823 | 8.5K | Nieves | 70 |
| PR Puerto Rico | #410 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 191 | — | Nieves | 82 |
| CO Colombia | #601 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.3K | 7 | Nieves | 103 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 10K | — | Nieves | 58 |
| UY Uruguay | #97 | 5,787 | 1 in 585 | 5.8K | Nieves | 44 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 5,753 | 1 in 2.9K | 5.8K | Nieves | 36 |
34,896 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); 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)
Nieves is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Spanish, 1. religious byname, from the title Maria de las Nieves ‘Mary of the Snows’, given particularly to children bom on 5 August, on which date the Virgin allegedly once caused it to snow in Rome. It is possible that the surname derives in part from a nickname for someone with snow-white hair. 2. Castilianized form of the Galician and Asturian-Leonese habitational name Neves.
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
Marian name honouring Nuestra Senora de las Nieves ‘Our Lady of the Snows’. O
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In Spanish, del latín nivēs, plural de nieve; alude a 'suprema blancura' y a la advocación mariana de las Nieves.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Spanish: from a title of the Virgin Mary, Nuestra Señora de las Nieves ‘Our Lady of the Snows’. The name refers to a miracle alleged to have taken place in the 4th century, when Mary caused it to snow in Rome during August. Cognate: Portuguese: Neves .
as a word
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)
- Roberto González Nievesb. 1950USFranciscan friar and archbishop
- Brazo de Orob. 1950MXnot in their usual nameMexican professional wrestler (1950-2017)
- Brazo de Platab. 1963MXnot in their usual nameMexican professional wrestler (1963-2021)
- Juan Nievesb. 1965USAmerican baseball player and coach
- Wil Nievesb. 1977USPuerto Rican baseball player
- Juan Luis Barriosb. 1983MXnot in their usual nameMexican middle and long distance runner
- Armando Nievesb. 1989COColombian footballer
- Jhaycob. 1993USnot in their usual namePuerto Rican singer
- Daniela Nievesb. 1997VEVenezuelan-born American actress
- Johnathan Nievesb. 1997USactor, born and raised in chicago.
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 68 sources across 32 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 36K | #947 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 35K | #1,004 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 28K | #1,146 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 5.8K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 5.8K | #687 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 58 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 7 | #109 |
Reference works 6
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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
- How do you pronounce Nieves?
- A machine transcription gives /njeβes/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Nieves mean, and where does it come from?
- las Nieves ‘Mary of the Snows’, given particularly to chil¬ dren born on 5 August, on which date the Virgin allegedly once caused it to snow in Rome. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- What are other forms of the name Nieves?
- In the etymology graph, Neves is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Nieves?
- In the United States, the national register counted 34,896 people named Nieves in 2010, about 1 in 9.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Nieves compared with other names?
- In Uruguay, Nieves is the 97th most common surname of 57,630 surnames recorded there.
- In which country does Nieves have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 35 thousand people named Nieves, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nieves.
What do you want to know about Nieves?
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/nievesThe 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, “Nieves” — the 97th most common surname in Uruguay. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.