Vega
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: by a meadow, Sp. vega (of pre-Roman origin, apparently originally denoting irrigated land, and perhaps akin to the Basque elements ibai river + the gen. suffix -ko, -ka)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/beɣa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Vega is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Costa Rica it is the 20th most common surname.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 98(measured from records)
- PEPeru≈1 in 356
- ARArgentina1 in 397
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #303 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 475 (measured from records)
- 1 in 98 (inferred from the name graph)
≈120,000 people, est.
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)
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)
by a meadow, Sp. vega (of pre-Roman origin, apparently originally denoting irrigated land, and perhaps akin to the Basque elements ibai river + the gen. suffix -ko, -ka).
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Vega is read(measured from records)
Vega 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.
- Spanish73%
by a meadow, Sp. vega (of pre-Roman origin, apparently originally denoting irrigated land, and perhaps akin to the Basque elements ibai river + the gen. suffix -ko, -ka).
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Vega (the star in the constellation of Lyra)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English14%
The brightest star in the constellation Lyra; Alpha (α) Lyrae. It forms one corner of the Summer Triangle.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Suzanne, US singer; star; stringed
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Lope de, Spanish dramatic poet
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)
Vega 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 12K | — | Vega | 21 |
| US United States | #615 | 116,673 | 1 in 2.9K | 117K | Vega | 475 |
| AR Argentina | #47 | 114,588 | 1 in 397 | 115K | Vega | 149 |
| PE Peru | #47 | ≈90,000 est. | ≈1 in 356 | — | Vega | 138 |
| CO Colombia | #83 | ≈78,000 est. | ≈1 in 629 | 47 | Vega | 178 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 55,294 | 1 in 306 | 55K | Vega | 90 |
| CR Costa Rica | #20 | 51,919 | 1 in 98 | 52K | Vega | 137 |
| CL Chile | #67 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 421 | 1 | Vega | 160 |
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); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); the co-datosgov-candidates register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; INEC — civil registry 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Vega is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
fertile plain
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
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)
- Jurij Vegab. 1754SISlovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer (1754-1802)
- Suzanne Vegab. 1959USAmerican singer-songwriter
- Daphne Rubin-Vegab. 1969PAPanamanian actress
- Paz Vegab. 1976ESSpanish actress
- Patryk Vegab. 1977PLPolish film director, screenwriter and producer
- Amelia Vegab. 1984DODominican model and Miss Universe 2003
- Alexa Vegab. 1988USAmerican actress
- Paulina Vega Dieppab. 1993COColombian beauty pageant titleholder
- Makenzie Vegab. 1994USAmerican actress
- Alexis Vegab. 1997MXMexican 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).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 79 sources across 38 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 117K | #258 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 117K | #261 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 115K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 88K | #318 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 55K | #57 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 52K | #32 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2024 | 536 | — |
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 47 | #69 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- 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)
- 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 Vega mean, and where does it come from?
- by a meadow, Sp. vega (of pre-Roman origin, apparently originally denoting irrigated land, and perhaps akin to the Basque elements ibai river + the gen. suffix -ko, -ka). Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Vega?
- A machine transcription gives /beɣa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Vega have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 121 thousand people named Vega in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled vega.
- Where is Vega most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Vega is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 98 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Vega?
- In the United States, the national register counted 116,673 people named Vega in 2010, about 1 in 2.9 thousand residents.
- How common is Vega compared with other names?
- In Costa Rica, Vega is the 20th most common surname of 8,899 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Vega?
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/vegaThe 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, “Vega” — the 20th most common surname in Costa Rica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.