Pelayo
surname · Latin script
Meaning: a male given name, equivalent to English Pelagius
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Pelayo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- USUnited States1 in 40K(measured from records)
- UYUruguay1 in 7.2K
- ESSpain1 in 11K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Sources
- 242 (measured from records)
- 1 in 7.2K (inferred from the name graph)
8,402 people, 2010
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
a male given name, equivalent to English Pelagius
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pelayo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 8,402 | 1 in 40K | 8.5K | Pelayo | 242 |
| ES Spain | — | 4,457 | 1 in 11K | 5.5K | Pelayo | 44 |
| AR Argentina | — | 1,406 | 1 in 32K | 1.4K | — | 1 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 471 | 1 in 7.2K | 471 | — | — |
| BR Brazil | — | 107 | 1 in 2M | 107 | — | — |
| CH Switzerland | — | 11 | 1 in 764K | 11 | — | 2 |
| TT Trinidad & Tobago | #195 | — | — | — | Pelayo | 1 |
8,402 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); 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)
Pelayo 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 Spanish, forma popular española de Pelagio; relacionada con el nombre del caudillo de la Reconquista.
as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios
Del mar
as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado
Spanish form of Pelagius ; see PELAGIA . The name was borne by a 10th-century saint who was martyred at the hands of the Moors in Cordoba, and who is still venerated in Spain.
as a word
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)
- Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayob. 1856ESSpanish scholar (1856–1912)
- Enrique Menéndez Pelayob. 1861ESSpanish writer (1861-1921)
- Tomás Pelayob. 1928ESSpanish prosecutor, lawyer and politician
- Sylvie Pelayob. 1929FRFrench actress (1929-2019)
- María Dolores Pelayob. 1943ESSpanish politician
- Baudilio Jáureguib. 1945UYnot in their usual nameUruguayan footballer
- Alejandro Pelayob. 1945MXMexican film director
- Gonzalo García-Pelayob. 1947ESSpanish film director and presenter
- José Jesús Villa Pelayob. 1962VEVenezuelan writer
- Francisco Zapatab. 1966ESnot in their usual nameSpanish basketball player (born 1966)
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 43 sources across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 8.5K | #4,060 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 8.4K | #4,218 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.1K | #5,295 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 4.5K | #1,180 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 4.5K | #1,180 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 1.4K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 471 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 107 | #60,224 |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 11 | #56,728 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Pelayo mean, and where does it come from?
- a male given name, equivalent to English Pelagius Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Pelayo have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 8.4 thousand people named Pelayo, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled pelayo.
- Where is Pelayo most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Pelayo is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 7.2 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Pelayo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 8,402 people named Pelayo in 2010, about 1 in 40 thousand residents.
- How common is Pelayo compared with other names?
- In Trinidad & Tobago, Pelayo is the 195th most common surname of 9,501 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pelayo?
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/pelayoThe 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, “Pelayo” — the 195th most common surname in Trinidad & Tobago. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.