Ruiz
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: a surname originating as a patronymic
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Ruiz is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 11th most common surname.
- NINicaragua≈1 in 93(inferred from the name graph)
- PYParaguay≈1 in 123
- ESSpain1 in 136
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.
- Spain (measured from records)
- #93 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 528 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 93 (inferred from the name graph)
366,644 people
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nicaragua, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Rüïz 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)
a surname originating as a patronymic
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
How Ruiz is read(measured from records)
Ruiz 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.
- Spanish77%
a surname originating as a patronymic
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English11%
son of Ruy, a shortened form of Rodrigo
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Ruiz 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | #11 | 366,644 | 1 in 136 | 367K | Ruiz | 293 |
| US United States | #85 | 238,234 | 1 in 1.4K | 238K | Ruiz | 528 |
| AR Argentina | #12 | 232,729 | 1 in 195 | 233K | Ruiz | 167 |
| CO Colombia | #22 | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 239 | 128 | Ruiz | 216 |
| PE Peru | #24 | ≈150,000 est. | ≈1 in 213 | 329K | Ruiz | 149 |
| NI Nicaragua | #7 | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 93 | — | Ruiz | 93 |
| PY Paraguay | #15 | ≈58,000 est. | ≈1 in 123 | — | Ruiz | 89 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 35,138 | 1 in 145 | 35K | Rüïz | 123 |
366,644 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); the pe-reniec-name-freq register; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Antonio Machadob. 1875ESnot in their usual nameSpanish poet and essayist (1875–1939)
- Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano de la Santissima Trinidad Ruiz Blasco Picassob. 1881ESSpanish painter and sculptor (1881–1973)
- Adolfo Ruiz Cortinesb. 1890MX54th President of Mexico
- Lola Floresb. 1923ESnot in their usual nameSpanish actress, dancer and singer (1923–1995)
- Paloma Picassob. 1949FRnot in their usual nameFrench/Spanish fashion designer and businesswoman
- Fernando Hierrob. 1968ESnot in their usual nameSpanish football player and manager
- Carlos Ruizb. 1979GTGuatemalan footballer
- Bryan Ruizb. 1985CRCosta Rican footballer
- Teresa Ruizb. 1988MXMexican actress
- Fabián Ruizb. 1996ESSpanish footballer
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 66 sources across 35 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 367K | #13 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 367K | #13 |
| PE Peru | RENIEC — Apellidos más frecuentes (national DNI bearer counts, 2025) | 2025 | 329K | #25 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 238K | #89 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 237K | #92 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 233K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 175K | #129 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 35K | #60 |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 128 | #22 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- 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)
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 Ruiz mean, and where does it come from?
- a surname originating as a patronymic Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- In which country does Ruiz have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 367 thousand people named Ruiz, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ruiz.
- How common is the name Ruiz?
- In Spain, the national register counted 366,644 people named Ruiz, about 1 in 136 residents.
- How common is Ruiz compared with other names?
- In Spain, Ruiz is the 11th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ruiz?
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/ruizThe 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, “Ruiz” — the 11th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.