Zamora
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: Spain, the name of which is of Arabic origin, apparently from azemur wild olive
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/θamoɾa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zamora is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Nicaragua it is the 26th most common surname.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 173(measured from records)
- NINicaragua≈1 in 258
- CLChile≈1 in 1.1K
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)
- #801 (measured from records)
- 4 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 429 (measured from records)
- 1 in 173 (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)
Spain, the name of which is of Arabic origin, apparently from azemur wild olive. Zarncke see Chernyakov Zarraga Basque: topographic name for someone who lived by a slag heap, from zarra slag + the local suffix -aga.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
How Zamora is read(measured from records)
Zamora 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.
- Spanish68%
Spain, the name of which is of Arabic origin, apparently from azemur wild olive. Zarncke see Chernyakov Zarraga Basque: topographic name for someone who lived by a slag heap, from zarra slag + the local suffix -aga.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Zamora (a province of Castile and León, Spain; capital: Zamora)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- English19%
river, town, Ecuador; prov, city, Sp
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Domenico, Bolognese painter
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)
Zamora 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 | — | Zamora | 11 |
| PH Philippines | #166 | ≈64,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Zamora | 111 |
| US United States | — | 61,729 | 1 in 5.4K | 62K | Zamora | 429 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 35,748 | 1 in 473 | 36K | Zamora | 81 |
| CR Costa Rica | #45 | 29,432 | 1 in 173 | 29K | Zamora | 123 |
| NI Nicaragua | #26 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 258 | — | Zamora | 60 |
| VE Venezuela | #230 | ≈22,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.3K | — | Zamora | 68 |
| CL Chile | #217 | ≈17,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Zamora | 126 |
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; 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)
Zamora 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.
Zamora, Leon (España); Inquisiçâo de Toledo; v. Samora
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Romanian, , 1. - loan (T-Jiu) ; munte linger Busteni ; cf. vb. a zamori (a lesina de foame) 2. Zamore, munt. 1482 (Rep D 137). Coincidenta : Zamora t. spaniol, si vrajitorul Zamori (Cronograful lui Cigala din 1637). Zane/e, -ea, -u v. Z a m c 3. Zanhir v. Safir III. 5. Zantea v. Vizant e 2.
as a nameDictionar Onomastic Rominesc
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)
- Ricardo Zamorab. 1901ESSpanish association football player (1901-1978)
- Jaime Paz Zamorab. 1939BOPresident of Bolivia from 1989 to 1993
- Iván Zamoranob. 1967CLnot in their usual nameChilean footballer
- Xavier Espot Zamorab. 1979ADprime minister of Andorra since 2019 (born 1979)
- Bobby Zamorab. 1981GBEnglish association football player (born 1981)
- Johnny Acostab. 1983CRnot in their usual nameCosta Rican association football player
- Gerardo Arteagab. 1998MXnot in their usual nameMexican association football player
- John Yeboahb. 2000DEnot in their usual nameEcuadorian association football player (born 2000)
- Álvaro Zamorab. 2002CRCosta Rican footballer
- Brandon Aguilerab. 2003CRnot in their usual nameCosta Rican 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 46 sources across 25 countries.
Reference works 6
- 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
- Hoffman, Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings (2nd ed., 2012)
- 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 Zamora mean, and where does it come from?
- Spain, the name of which is of Arabic origin, apparently from azemur wild olive. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Zamora?
- A machine transcription gives /θamoɾa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Zamora have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 119 thousand people named Zamora in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zamora.
- Where is Zamora most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Zamora is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 173 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Zamora?
- In the United States, the national register counted 61,729 people named Zamora in 2010, about 1 in 5.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Zamora compared with other names?
- In Nicaragua, Zamora is the 26th most common surname of 5,756 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Zamora?
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/zamoraThe 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, “Zamora” — the 26th most common surname in Nicaragua. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.