Oliva
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: olive (fruit)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/oliba/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Oliva is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country. In Guatemala it is the 37th most common surname.
- HNHonduras≈1 in 556(inferred from the name graph)
- GTGuatemala≈1 in 1K
- ARArgentina1 in 1.2K
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)
- Sources
- 336 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 556 (inferred from the name graph)
37,188 people
Highest-authority source
Honduras, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Either person who lives by an olive grove, grower/seller of olives, maker/seller of olive oil, or person from a place called Santa Oliva.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 19 languages in the etymology graph.
How Oliva is read(measured from records)
Oliva 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.
- Spanish70%
olive (fruit)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English17%
Either person who lives by an olive grove, grower/seller of olives, maker/seller of olive oil, or person from a place called Santa Oliva.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
olivary body
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Oliva 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 | #185 | 37,188 | 1 in 1.2K | 37K | Oliva | 110 |
| PH Philippines | #523 | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Oliva | 71 |
| ES Spain | #189 | 24,210 | 1 in 2.1K | 24K | Oliva | 190 |
| US United States | — | 19,513 | 1 in 17K | 20K | Oliva | 336 |
| GT Guatemala | #37 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1K | — | Oliva | 76 |
| HN Honduras | #72 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 556 | — | Oliva | 46 |
| CL Chile | #259 | ≈9,500 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | — | Oliva | 109 |
| SV El Salvador | #239 | ≈4,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.6K | — | Oliva | 45 |
37,188 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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)
Oliva 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.
In Italian, topographic name for someone who lived by an olive
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Amsterdam, Brasil, Portugal, España, Ciudad de Mexico; olive oil seller
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Italian, do lat. oliva; cultivador, produtor ou mercador de azeitonas
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
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)
- Ella T. Grassob. 1919USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician; 83rd governor of Connecticut (1975-80)
- Tony Olivab. 1938CUCuban Hall of Fame baseball player
- Sergio Olivab. 1941CUCuban bodybuilder (1941–2012)
- Patrizio Olivab. 1959ITboxer
- Jon Olivab. 1960USAmerican musician
- Criss Olivab. 1963USAmerican guitarist (1963–1993)
- Jay Olivab. 1976USAmerican filmmaker
- Mariana Díaz Olivab. 1976ARArgentine female tennis player
- Jonny Magallónb. 1981MXnot in their usual nameMexican footballer
- Lúcio Flávio da Silva Olivab. 1986BRBrazilian footballer
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 88 sources across 42 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 37K | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 24K | #219 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 24K | #218 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 20K | #1,835 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 19K | #1,833 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 15K | #2,241 |
Reference works 9
- 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
- Lietuvių kalbos institutas — Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas (Lithuanian surname dictionary)
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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
- Where does the name Oliva come from?
- Either person who lives by an olive grove, grower/seller of olives, maker/seller of olive oil, or person from a place called Santa Oliva. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What does the name Oliva mean?
- In Spanish, olive (fruit)
- How do you pronounce Oliva?
- A machine transcription gives /oliba/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What are other forms of the name Oliva?
- In the etymology graph, Olivo, Olivar and Oliveto are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Oliva have the most bearers?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 37 thousand people named Oliva, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled oliva.
- How common is the name Oliva?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 37,188 people named Oliva, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Oliva compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Oliva is the 185th most common surname of 398,256 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Oliva?
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/olivaThe 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, “Oliva” — the 185th most common surname in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.