Otero

surname · Latin script

Meaning: In form it is a habitation name; it may perhaps be from a place named from a personal nickname derived from Pol

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

/oteɾo/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Otero is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country. In Uruguay it is the 83rd most common surname.

rarermore common
  • UYUruguay1 in 578(measured from records)
  • ESSpain1 in 1.3K
  • COColombia≈1 in 2.5K

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)

38,301 people

3 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
389 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 401 (inferred from the name graph)

Puerto Rico, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

OteroLatin(measured from records)
ОтероCyrillic(measured from records)
오테로Hangul(measured from records)

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)

In form it is a habitation name; it may perhaps be from a place named from a personal nickname derived from Pol. osowialy miserable, depressed. places in N and NW Spain so called, from Sp. otero height, hill (LL altarium, a deriv. of altus high).

Sources 1

  • A dictionary of surnames

Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Otero 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.

Where Otero is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
ES Spain#13438,3011 in 1.3K38KOtero199
US United States—20,9371 in 16K22KOtero389
CO Colombia#350≈19,000 est.≈1 in 2.5K7Otero146
AR Argentina#27017,7701 in 2.6K18KOtero108
PR Puerto Rico#520≈8,000 est.≈1 in 401—Otero71
UY Uruguay#835,8651 in 5785.9KOtero75

38,301 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: 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); the co-datosgov-candidates register; 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Otero is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, United Kingdom, Spain

    Languages: English, Dutch

    Also written O'Tero, Öţęřo, Otèro, Ötërö

  • French surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Spain, Philippines

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Otéro, Otëro

  • a separate name3 spellings in the group

    Also written Otéro, Ótero

  • Norwegian surname4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Norway, United States, Spain, Sweden

    Languages: Norwegian, Swedish, Danish

    Also written Ötërö

50 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Otero is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Spanish, knoll

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In osp, hill, hillock, knoll

    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)

180018501900195020002050Miguel Antonio Otero, b. 1829Mariano S. Otero, b. 1844Luis Otero, b. 1893Lisandro Otero, b. 1932Manolo Otero, b. 1942Denis Milar, b. 1952Jorge Otero, b. 1969Abelardo de la Espriella, b. 1978Rómulo Otero, b. 1992Sofía Otero, b. 2013

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)

FormalEstimado/a Otero,Dear Otero, (English)
InformalEstimado/a Otero,Hello, (English)

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 39 sources across 25 countries.

Official registers attesting Otero
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—38K#126
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—38K#126
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020202022K#1,617
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010201021K#1,716
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—18K—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000200017K#1,947
UY UruguayINE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public)—5.9K—
CO ColombiaColombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co)—7#109
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

  • 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)
  • 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

Where does the name Otero come from?
In form it is a habitation name; it may perhaps be from a place named from a personal nickname derived from Pol. osowialy miserable, depressed. places in N and NW Spain so called, from Sp. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
How do you pronounce Otero?
A machine transcription gives /oteɾo/ (IPA) for Spanish.
What does the name Otero mean?
Recorded meaning: In form it is a habitation name; it may perhaps be from a place named from a personal nickname derived from Pol.
In which country does Otero have the most bearers?
In Spain, the national register counted about 38 thousand people named Otero, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled otero.
How common is the name Otero?
In Spain, the national register counted 38,301 people named Otero, about 1 in 1.3 thousand residents.
How common is Otero compared with other names?
In Spain, Otero is the 134th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Otero?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/otero

The 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, “Otero” — the 134th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Otero parses inside a full name →