Pales
surname · Latin script
Meaning: third-person singular simple present indicative of pale
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/peɪlz/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pales is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 92K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 1.9M
- PRPuerto Rico≈1 in 45K
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.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 119 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 45K (inferred from the name graph)
≈1,200 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Puerto Rico, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Páleš in SK Slovakia.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
third-person singular simple present indicative of pale
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pales 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | ≈1,200 est. | ≈1 in 92K | — | Pales | 26 |
| BR Brazil | 776 | 1 in 273K | 776 | — | 1 |
| ID Indonesia | ≈530 est. | ≈1 in 509K | — | Pales | 27 |
| US United States | 174 | 1 in 1.9M | 174 | Pales | 119 |
| ES Spain | 136 | 1 in 368K | 136 | — | 7 |
| SK Slovakia | ≈74 est. | ≈1 in 73K | — | Páleš | 18 |
| PR Puerto Rico | ≈70 est. | ≈1 in 45K | — | Pales | 4 |
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; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 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)
Pales 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 English, Roman guardian spirit of flocks
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Latin, second-person singular present active subjunctive of pālō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Catalan, plural of pala
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Breton, palais, palace
as a wordDeshayes, Dictionnaire étymologique du breton (2003)
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)
- Luis Palés Matosb. 1898USPuerto Rican writer (1898–1959)
- Léon Palesb. 1905FRFrench surgeon
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 17 sources across 10 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 776 | #11,536 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 174 | #103,181 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 164 | #101,654 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 163 | #114,090 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 136 | #22,144 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 136 | #22,047 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Pales mean, and where does it come from?
- third-person singular simple present indicative of pale Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Pales?
- A machine transcription gives /peɪlz/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Pales have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 1.2 thousand people named Pales in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pales.
- How common is the name Pales?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 776 people named Pales, about 1 in 273 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Pales?
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/palesThe 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, “Pales”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.