Ramirez
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Spanish patronymic ‘son of Ramiro’, from Germanic name meaning literally ‘counsel-fame’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ɾamirɛs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ramirez is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country, where it is the 37th most common surname.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 50(measured from records)
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 69
- PYParaguay≈1 in 96
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #48 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 546 (measured from records)
- 1 in 50 (inferred from the name graph)
557,423 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Costa Rica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Ramírez in CR Costa Rica.
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)
Spanish patronymic ‘son of Ramiro’, from Germanic name meaning literally ‘counsel-fame’.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ramirez 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 | #37 | 557,423 | 1 in 597 | 557K | Ramirez | 546 |
| CO Colombia | #8 | ≈340,000 est. | ≈1 in 142 | 232 | Ramirez | 234 |
| VE Venezuela | #11 | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 113 | 1.6K | Ramirez | 135 |
| AR Argentina | #17 | 234,866 | 1 in 194 | 235K | Ramirez | 164 |
| PE Peru | #14 | ≈220,000 est. | ≈1 in 147 | 463K | Ramirez | 153 |
| CR Costa Rica | #221 | 100,951 | 1 in 50 | 101K | Ramírez | 153 |
| SV El Salvador | #8 | ≈94,000 est. | ≈1 in 69 | 99K | Ramirez | 103 |
| PY Paraguay | #7 | ≈75,000 est. | ≈1 in 96 | — | Ramirez | 90 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 28,327 | 1 in 120 | 28K | — | 88 |
557,423 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; the pe-reniec-name-freq register; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); the co-datosgov-candidates register; El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; 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)
Ramirez 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 English, A surname from Spanish [in turn originating as a patronymic].
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, sobrenome hispânico; patronímico, filho de Ramiro
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In Iloko, Ramirez, Ramírez: a common surname from Spanish, generally concentrated in Ilocos Sur and La Union provinces
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)
- Carlos the Jackalb. 1949VEnot in their usual nameVenezuelan-born international terror operative
- Richard Ramirezb. 1960USAmerican serial killer (1960–2013)
- Hugo López-Gatellb. 1969MXnot in their usual nameMexican physician, researcher, professor and public official - Undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion
- Sara Ramirezb. 1975MXMexican-American actor and singer
- Édgar Ramírezb. 1977VEVenezuelan actor
- Dania Ramirezb. 1979DODominican actress
- Gustavo Dudamelb. 1981VEnot in their usual nameVenezuelan conductor and violinist
- David Ospinab. 1988COnot in their usual nameColombian association football player
- Giovani dos Santosb. 1989MXnot in their usual nameMexican association football player
- Xolo Maridueñab. 2001USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
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 59 sources across 31 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 557K | #28 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 544K | #27 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 389K | #42 |
| PE Peru | RENIEC — DNI population names | 2019 | 289K | #29 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 235K | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 101K | #9 |
| SV El Salvador | El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived) | — | 99K | #8 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 28K | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 232 | #9 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 8
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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
- What does the name Ramirez mean, and where does it come from?
- Spanish patronymic ‘son of Ramiro’, from Germanic name meaning literally ‘counsel-fame’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Ramirez have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 557 thousand people named Ramirez, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ramirez.
- Where is Ramirez most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ramirez is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 50 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How do you pronounce Ramirez?
- A machine transcription gives /ɾamirɛs/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- How common is the name Ramirez?
- In the United States, the national register counted 557,423 people named Ramirez in 2010, about 1 in 597 residents.
- How common is Ramirez compared with other names?
- In the United States, Ramirez is the 37th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ramirez?
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/ramirezThe 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, “Ramirez” — the 37th most common surname in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.