Rivas
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: Rivas (a department of Nicaragua)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ribas/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Rivas is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Venezuela than in any other country, where it is the 21st most common surname.
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 99(inferred from the name graph)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 167
- NINicaragua≈1 in 175
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.
- Venezuela (inferred from the name graph)
- #419 (measured from records)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 450 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 99 (inferred from the name graph)
≈170,000 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)
Rivas (a department of Nicaragua)
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Rivas is read(measured from records)
Rivas 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.
- Spanish76%
Rivas (a department of Nicaragua)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ciudad de Mexico; v. Ribas
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
- English12%
A department of Nicaragua.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
dept, town, Nicaragua
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Rivas 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VE Venezuela | #21 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 167 | 1.3K | Rivas | 114 |
| US United States | #889 | 76,205 | 1 in 4.4K | 79K | Rivas | 450 |
| SV El Salvador | #15 | ≈65,000 est. | ≈1 in 99 | 71K | Rivas | 106 |
| ES Spain | #98 | 45,776 | 1 in 1.1K | 46K | Rivas | 201 |
| AR Argentina | #167 | 41,632 | 1 in 1.1K | 42K | Rivas | 126 |
| NI Nicaragua | #14 | ≈35,000 est. | ≈1 in 175 | — | Rivas | 76 |
| PY Paraguay | #81 | ≈18,000 est. | ≈1 in 401 | — | Rivas | 64 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 7,660 | 1 in 442 | 7.7K | — | 59 |
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: asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); 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 — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); 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)
Rivas is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Latin, second-person singular present active indicative of rīvō
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In French, second-person singular past historic of river
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 Rivasb. 1925USAmerican actor (1925-2003)
- Manuel Rivasb. 1957ESGalician writer and journalist
- Cándido Muatetema Rivasb. 1960GQPrime Minister of Equatorial Guinea (1960-2014)
- Érica Rivasb. 1974ARArgentine actress
- Paola Núñezb. 1978MXnot in their usual nameMexican actress
- Dani Rovirab. 1980ESnot in their usual nameSpanish comedian and actor
- Martiño Rivasb. 1985ESSpanish actor
- Eva Rivasb. 1987AMArmenian singer
- Rigoberto Rivasb. 1998HNHonduran association football player
- Pablo Barriosb. 2003ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer (born 2003)
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 48 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 79K | #401 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 76K | #426 |
| SV El Salvador | El Salvador top-100 surnames (surnam.es / RNPN-derived) | — | 71K | #15 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 55K | #553 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 46K | #99 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 46K | #99 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 42K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 7.7K | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 4
- 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)
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 Rivas mean, and where does it come from?
- Rivas (a department of Nicaragua) Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Rivas?
- A machine transcription gives /ribas/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Rivas have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 171 thousand people named Rivas in Venezuela, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled rivas.
- How common is the name Rivas?
- In the United States, the national register counted 76,205 people named Rivas in 2010, about 1 in 4.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Rivas compared with other names?
- In Venezuela, Rivas is the 21st most common surname of 83,461 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Rivas?
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/rivasThe 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, “Rivas” — the 21st most common surname in Venezuela. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.