Nunez
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Samuel Nunez, in Census 1841 (Whitechapel, Middx); Moses Nunez, in Census 1851 (Whitechapel, Middx); Samuel Nunez, in Census 1851 (Whitechapel, Middx); Raffael Nunes, in Census 1861 (Hackney, Middx);
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/nunɛs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Nunez is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country, where it is the 34th most common surname.
- UYUruguay1 in 57(measured from records)
- CRCosta Rica1 in 151
- HNHonduras≈1 in 283
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)
- #273 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 470 (measured from records)
- 1 in 57 (inferred from the name graph)
158,449 people
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Nuñez in AR Argentina, VE Venezuela, ES Spain and 4 more.
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)
Samuel Nunez, in Census 1841 (Whitechapel, Middx); Moses Nunez, in Census 1851 (Whitechapel, Middx); Samuel Nunez, in Census 1851 (Whitechapel, Middx); Raffael Nunes, in Census 1861 (Hackney, Middx); Abraham Nunes, in Census 1891 1974 (Whitechapel, Middx); Myer Nunes, Jacob Nunes, in Census 1911 (Mile End Old Town, Middx).
Sources 1
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Nunez 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 | #34 | 158,449 | 1 in 287 | 158K | Nuñez | 118 |
| US United States | #264 | 125,350 | 1 in 2.7K | 129K | Nunez | 470 |
| ES Spain | #57 | 94,702 | 1 in 528 | 95K | Nuñez | 152 |
| VE Venezuela | #80 | ≈66,000 est. | ≈1 in 435 | — | Nuñez | 69 |
| UY Uruguay | #11 | 59,663 | 1 in 57 | 60K | Nuñez | 61 |
| CR Costa Rica | #43 | 33,827 | 1 in 151 | 34K | Nuñez | 78 |
| HN Honduras | #30 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 283 | — | Nuñez | 50 |
| PY Paraguay | #33 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 315 | — | Nuñez | 43 |
158,449 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Nunez 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.
patronymic from the personal name Nuho (see Nuno).
as a nameDictionary of American Family Names
In English, Núñez: A surname from Spanish
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In roa-opt, a surname originating as a patronymic
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)
- Alcide Nunezb. 1884USEarly jazz clarinetist (1884–1934)
- Samuel B. Nunez, Jr.b. 1930USAmerican politician (1930–2012)
- Celso Amorimb. 1942BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian diplomat (born 1942)
- Joe Nuñezb. 1950USAmerican actor
- Sigrid Nunezb. 1951USAmerican writer (1951-)
- Joe Nunezb. 1975USdrummer
- Licia Nunezb. 1980ITItalian actress
- Steve Warky Nunezb. 1980USAmerican actor
- Eric Nunezb. 1982USAmerican tennis player
- Tristan Nunezb. 1995USAmerican racing driver
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 42 sources across 28 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 129K | #228 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 125K | #242 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 90K | #306 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 60K | — |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 424 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 242 | #14,311 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 242 | #14,280 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 1 | #31,478 |
| 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
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- What does the name Nunez mean, and where does it come from?
- Samuel Nunez, in Census 1841 (Whitechapel, Middx); Moses Nunez, in Census 1851 (Whitechapel, Middx); Samuel Nunez, in Census 1851 (Whitechapel, Middx); Raffael Nunes, in Census 1861 (Hackney, Middx);… Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland.
- How do you pronounce Nunez?
- A machine transcription gives /nunɛs/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Nunez have the most bearers?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 158 thousand people named Nunez, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled nuñez.
- Where is Nunez most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Nunez is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 57 people — even though Argentina holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Nunez?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 158,449 people named Nunez, about 1 in 287 residents.
- How common is Nunez compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Nunez is the 34th most common surname of 398,256 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Nunez?
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/nunezThe 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, “Nunez” — the 34th most common surname in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.