Vespa
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in English: An Italian motor scooter
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/ˈveɪspə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Vespa is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Uruguay than in any other country.
- UYUruguay1 in 2.4K(measured from records)
- ARArgentina1 in 110K
- BOBolivia≈1 in 37K
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.
- Uruguay (measured from records)
- Sources
- 95 (measured from records)
- 1 in 2.4K (inferred from the name graph)
1,427 people
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
An Italian motor scooter.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Vespa is read(measured from records)
Vespa is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- English43%
An Italian motor scooter.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Italian motor scooter co.
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
- Spanish33%
Vespa (brand name)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Italian5.6%
wasp
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Vespa 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UY Uruguay | #450 | 1,427 | 1 in 2.4K | 1.4K | Vespa | 25 |
| IT Italy | — | ≈1,300 est. | ≈1 in 49K | listed | Vespa | 66 |
| US United States | — | 713 | 1 in 467K | 756 | Vespa | 85 |
| BR Brazil | — | 527 | 1 in 402K | 527 | Vespa | 61 |
| AR Argentina | — | 413 | 1 in 110K | 413 | Vespa | 36 |
| BO Bolivia | — | ≈310 est. | ≈1 in 37K | — | Vespa | 26 |
| PY Paraguay | — | ≈53 est. | ≈1 in 137K | — | Vespa | 6 |
1,427 people counted by INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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 Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); the xinhua-italian-manual register; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname). 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)
Vespa 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 Galician, alternative form of avespa (“wasp”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Finnish, scooter (motorcycle or moped equipped with a platform for the operator's feet)
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)
- Angela Vespab. 1887ITItalian nun and pedagogue (1887-1969)
- Amleto Vespab. 1888ITItalian mercenary
- Aldo Vespab. 1924ITsentenced to death during the World War II
- Bruno Vespab. 1944ITItalian television and newspaper journalist (born 1944)
- Françoise Vespab. 1957FRFrench politician
- Jeff Vespab. 1970USAmerican photographer
- Líber Vespab. 1971UYUruguayan footballer (1971-2018)
- Federico Vespab. 1979ITItalian journalist
- Lorenzo Vespab. 1993ITItalian water polo player
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 26 sources across 16 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 1.4K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 756 | #32,585 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 750 | #29,625 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 713 | #32,302 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 527 | #16,273 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 413 | — |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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 Vespa mean, and where does it come from?
- An Italian motor scooter. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- How do you pronounce Vespa?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈveɪspə/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Vespa have the most bearers?
- In Uruguay, the national register counted about 1.4 thousand people named Vespa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled vespa.
- Where is Vespa most common?
- Vespa is densest in Uruguay, where the national register counts about 1 in 2.4 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Vespa?
- In Uruguay, the national register counted 1,427 people named Vespa, about 1 in 2.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Vespa compared with other names?
- In Uruguay, Vespa is the 450th most common surname of 57,630 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Vespa?
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/vespaThe 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, “Vespa” — the 450th most common surname in Uruguay. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.