Portillo
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: gate
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Portillo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in El Salvador than in any other country, where it is the 20th most common surname.
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 124(inferred from the name graph)
- HNHonduras≈1 in 274
- PYParaguay≈1 in 280
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.
- El Salvador (inferred from the name graph)
- #923 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 370 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 124 (inferred from the name graph)
≈52,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
El Salvador, est.
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(measured from records)
Person from Portillo, Spain, meaning little mountain pass.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Portillo is read(measured from records)
Portillo 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.
- Spanish79%
gate
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English13%
Person from Portillo, Spain, meaning little mountain pass.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Portillo 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SV El Salvador | #20 | ≈52,000 est. | ≈1 in 124 | 56K | Portillo | 92 |
| US United States | — | 37,890 | 1 in 8.8K | 41K | Portillo | 370 |
| HN Honduras | #26 | ≈34,000 est. | ≈1 in 274 | — | Portillo | 66 |
| AR Argentina | #264 | 28,478 | 1 in 1.6K | 28K | Portillo | 87 |
| PY Paraguay | #49 | ≈26,000 est. | ≈1 in 280 | — | Portillo | 60 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 4,179 | 1 in 811 | 4.2K | — | 42 |
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; El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Portillo is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Basque, Portillo. Eraintzeko portillotik igaran nahi izan ziren, bena gardak han gainti zirela jakinik, behar üken zien Urdaiterat bürüz ützüli. Const 30. Ori puntara beño apalago badago portillo bat. ZMoso 49.
as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia
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)
- Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrerab. 1951GTPresident of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004
- Michael Portillob. 1953GBBritish journalist, broadcaster, and former politician (born 1953)
- Blanca Portillob. 1963ESSpanish actress
- Mauricio Soriab. 1966BOnot in their usual nameBolivian footballer profesional
- Javier García Portillob. 1982ESSpanish exfootball player
- Francisco Portillo Solerb. 1990ESSpanish footballer
- Yair Rodríguezb. 1992MXnot in their usual nameMexican mixed martial artist and Taekwondo black belt
- Gustavo Gómezb. 1993PYnot in their usual nameParaguayan association football player
- Jonathan Rodríguezb. 1993UYnot in their usual nameUruguayan association football player
- Ofilio Portillob. 2000actor
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 30 sources across 21 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SV El Salvador | El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived) | — | 56K | #20 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 41K | #835 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 38K | #914 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 28K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 24K | #1,353 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 4.2K | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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
- Where does the name Portillo come from?
- Person from Portillo, Spain, meaning little mountain pass. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What does the name Portillo mean?
- In Spanish, gate
- In which country does Portillo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 52 thousand people named Portillo in El Salvador, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled portillo.
- How common is the name Portillo?
- In the United States, the national register counted 37,890 people named Portillo in 2010, about 1 in 8.8 thousand residents.
- How common is Portillo compared with other names?
- In El Salvador, Portillo is the 20th most common surname of 35,145 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Portillo?
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/portilloThe 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, “Portillo” — the 20th most common surname in El Salvador. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.