Sanchez
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Spanish patronymic meaning ‘son of Sancho’, from a male personal name from Latin Sanctius or Sancius, probably from sanctus ‘holy’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/sanʧɛs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Sanchez is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 7th most common surname.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 49(measured from records)
- ESSpain1 in 61
- ECEcuador1 in 75
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)
- #34 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 564 (measured from records)
- 1 in 49 (inferred from the name graph)
818,287 people
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)
Locally spelled Sánchez 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 meaning ‘son of Sancho’, from a male personal name from Latin Sanctius or Sancius, probably from sanctus ‘holy’.
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)
Sanchez 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 | #7 | 818,287 | 1 in 61 | 818K | Sanchez | 322 |
| US United States | #29 | 612,752 | 1 in 543 | 613K | Sanchez | 564 |
| CO Colombia | #7 | ≈400,000 est. | ≈1 in 124 | 5.6K | Sanchez | 237 |
| AR Argentina | #10 | 360,726 | 1 in 126 | 361K | Sanchez | 201 |
| VE Venezuela | #7 | ≈340,000 est. | ≈1 in 84 | 2K | Sanchez | 136 |
| EC Ecuador | #736 | 224,011 | 1 in 75 | 224K | Sanchez | 123 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #5 | ≈130,000 est. | ≈1 in 80 | — | Sanchez | 128 |
| CR Costa Rica | #191 | 105,085 | 1 in 49 | 105K | Sánchez | 143 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 45,249 | 1 in 75 | 45K | — | 111 |
818,287 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); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); RNEC — Nombres más registrados (newborn name statistics); INEC — civil registry names; 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)
Sanchez is also recorded in 5 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] of Spanish origin.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Italian, sobrenome hispânico; filho de Sancho
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
In Filipino, a common surname from Spanish [in turn originating as a patronymic], equivalent to Spanish Sánchez, most widespread in Metro Manila, Bulacan and Laguna
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Iloko, Sánchez: a surname from Spanish [in turn originating as a patronymic], mostly found in Ilocos Sur
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In roa-opt, a surname originating as a patronymic
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)
- Fidel Sánchez Hernándezb. 1917SVPresident of El Salvador (1917-2003)
- Óscar Ariasb. 1941CRnot in their usual namePresident of Costa Rica (1986–1990, 2006–2010)
- Carlos the Jackalb. 1949VEnot in their usual nameVenezuelan-born international terror operative
- Hugo Sánchezb. 1958MXMexican footballer and manager
- Arantxa Sánchez Vicariob. 1971ESSpanish tennis player
- Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejónb. 1972ESPrime Minister of Spain since 2018
- Penélope Cruzb. 1974ESnot in their usual nameSpanish actress (born 1974)
- David Villab. 1981ESnot in their usual nameSpanish footballer
- Álvaro Negredob. 1985ESnot in their usual nameSpanish former footballer
- Alexis Sánchezb. 1988CLChilean footballer (born 1988)
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 67 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 818K | #7 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 818K | #7 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 613K | #26 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 608K | #25 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 441K | #33 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 361K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 224K | #2 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 105K | #8 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 45K | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 2.1K | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 244 | #8 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — Consulta de nombres (Padrón Nacional Electoral name enumeration) | — | — | — |
Reference works 7
- 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 Sanchez mean, and where does it come from?
- Spanish patronymic meaning ‘son of Sancho’, from a male personal name from Latin Sanctius or Sancius, probably from sanctus ‘holy’. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Sanchez?
- A machine transcription gives /sanʧɛs/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What are other forms of the name Sanchez?
- In the etymology graph, Margolin is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Sanchez have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 818 thousand people named Sanchez, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled sanchez.
- Where is Sanchez most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Sanchez is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 49 people — even though Spain holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Sanchez?
- In Spain, the national register counted 818,287 people named Sanchez, about 1 in 61 residents.
- How common is Sanchez compared with other names?
- In Spain, Sanchez is the 7th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Sanchez?
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/sanchezThe 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, “Sanchez” — the 7th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.