Palermo
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 22 countries · latest register: BFS, 2024
/pəˈlɛə(ɹ)məʊ/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Palermo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.
- UYUruguay1 in 2K(measured from records)
- ITItaly≈1 in 5.1K
- ARArgentina1 in 11K
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.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 352 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.0K (inferred from the name graph)
≈12,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(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
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
How Palermo is read
(measured from records)Palermo is one spelling over 3 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.
- English54%
prov. Sicilia
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Spanish25%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Palermo in Spanish.
- Portuguese7.1%
Palermo (a city and province of Sicily, Italy)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)Palermo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT Italy | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.1K | listed | Palermo | 73 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 11K | — | Palermo | 52 |
| US United States | — | 8,165 | 1 in 41K | 8.2K | Palermo | 352 |
| AR Argentina | — | 4,277 | 1 in 11K | 4.3K | — | 3 |
| BR Brazil | — | 4,242 | 1 in 50K | 4.2K | — | 4 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 1,706 | 1 in 2K | 1.7K | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | — | 483 | 1 in 17K | 483 | Palermo | 14 |
| JM Jamaica | #947 | ≈140 est. | ≈1 in 21K | — | Palermo | 1 |
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 2000; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); the xinhua-italian-manual register; BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). 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)Palermo 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 Italian, oriundo da cidade siciliana de Palermo; do gr. pan e hormós
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In Italian, Palermo (the capital city and province of Sicily, Italy)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Polish, Palermo (a city in Sicily, Italy)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, pilsēta Itālijā (it. val. Palermo), osta Sicīlijas ziemeļu piekrastē, Sicīlijas reģiona un Palermo provinces administratīvais centrs, 655000 iedzīvotāju (2014. g.)
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)- Mario Palermob. 1898ITItalian politician (1898-1985)
- Carlo Palermob. 1947ITItalian judge
- Brian Palermob. 1966USAmerican actor and comedian
- Vincenzo Palermob. 1967ITItalian composer
- Tony Palermob. 1969USAmerican musician
- Dario Palermob. 1970ITItalian composer
- Martín Palermo Dacquino Guillermob. 1973ARArgentine footballer and manager
- Olivia Palermob. 1986USAmerican fashion influencer
- Léa Palermob. 1993FRbadminton player
- Venus Palermob. 1997CHSwiss rapper and YouTube personality
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)41 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 8.2K | #3,977 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.2K | #4,348 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 7.8K | #4,415 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 4.3K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 4.2K | #2,566 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 1.7K | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 483 | #2,682 |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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)
- 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
- How do you pronounce Palermo?
- It depends on the language: in English /pəˈlɛə(ɹ)məʊ/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /paleɾmo/; in Portuguese /paˈlɛɦ.mu/ (Wiktionary). Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
- In which country does Palermo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 12 thousand people named Palermo in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled palermo.
- Where is Palermo most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Palermo is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 2.0 thousand people — even though Italy holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Palermo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,165 people named Palermo in 2010, about 1 in 41 thousand residents.
- How common is Palermo compared with other names?
- In Jamaica, Palermo is the 947th most common surname of 50,451 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Palermo?
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/palermoThe 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, “Palermo” — the 947th most common surname in Jamaica. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.