Somoza
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: places so called, in the provinces of La Coruna, Orense, and Pontevedra. Vars.: Prov.: Sol(l)ier. Cat.: Sole. Dims.: It.; Solarino, Solaroli
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/somoθa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Somoza is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country.
- NINicaragua≈1 in 3.3K(inferred from the name graph)
- SVEl Salvador≈1 in 6.1K
- ESSpain1 in 16K
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)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 176 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.3K (inferred from the name graph)
3,124 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Nicaragua, 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)
places so called, in the provinces of La Coruna, Orense, and Pontevedra. Vars.: Prov.: Sol(l)ier. Cat.: Sole. Dims.: It.; Solarino, Solaroli.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
How Somoza is read(measured from records)
Somoza 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.
- Spanish70%
places so called, in the provinces of La Coruna, Orense, and Pontevedra. Vars.: Prov.: Sol(l)ier. Cat.: Sole. Dims.: It.; Solarino, Solaroli.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
- English18%
A surname from Spanish [in turn from Galician].
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Nicaraguan political family
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Somoza 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 | — | 3,124 | 1 in 16K | 3.1K | Somoza | 113 |
| NI Nicaragua | #291 | ≈1,900 est. | ≈1 in 3.3K | — | Somoza | 21 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 73K | — | Somoza | 26 |
| US United States | — | 1,237 | 1 in 269K | 1.3K | Somoza | 176 |
| AR Argentina | — | 1,197 | 1 in 38K | 1.2K | Somoza | 59 |
| SV El Salvador | #421 | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 6.1K | — | Somoza | 24 |
| BO Bolivia | — | ≈650 est. | ≈1 in 18K | — | Somoza | 28 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 163 | 1 in 21K | 163 | — | 18 |
3,124 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Telesforo Ojea Somozab. 1858ESSpanish journalist, politician and lawyer (1858-1890)
- Alfredo Somozab. 1892ESSpanish politician
- Lázaro Somoza Silvab. 1895ESSpanish journalist
- Anastasio Somoza Debayleb. 1925NIDictador of Nicaragua (1967–72, 1974–79)
- José Carlos Somozab. 1959CUSpanish writer
- Tacho Gonzálezb. 1961ESnot in their usual nameSpanish actor
- Xosé Luís Vázquez Somozab. 1961ESSpanish writer
- Ben Somozab. 1979USAmerican soccer player
- Leandro Somozab. 1981ARArgentine footballer
- Pablo Blancob. 2000ESnot in their usual nameSpanish film editor
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 20 sources across 13 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 3.1K | #1,646 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 3.1K | #1,646 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 1.3K | #20,308 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 1.2K | #21,218 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 1.2K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 910 | #25,503 |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 163 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 2
- 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
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 Somoza mean, and where does it come from?
- places so called, in the provinces of La Coruna, Orense, and Pontevedra. Vars.: Prov.: Sol(l)ier. Cat.: Sole. Dims.: It.; Solarino, Solaroli. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Somoza?
- A machine transcription gives /somoθa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Somoza have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 3.1 thousand people named Somoza, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled somoza.
- How common is the name Somoza?
- In Spain, the national register counted 3,124 people named Somoza, about 1 in 16 thousand residents.
- How common is Somoza compared with other names?
- In Nicaragua, Somoza is the 291st most common surname of 5,756 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Somoza?
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/somozaThe 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, “Somoza” — the 291st most common surname in Nicaragua. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.