Zuñiga
surname · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/θuɲiɡa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Zuñiga is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Costa Rica than in any other country, where it is the 13th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Spanish Zúñiga, from Basque Zuñiga. Introduced through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos .
- CRCosta Rica1 in 80(measured from records)
- HNHonduras≈1 in 278
- NINicaragua≈1 in 621
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.
- Costa Rica (measured from records)
- #688 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 413 (measured from records)
- 1 in 80 (inferred from the name graph)
63,780 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)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Zuniga in US United States, HN Honduras, NI Nicaragua.
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)
- SpanishZúñiga(measured from records)
- BasqueZuñiga(measured from records)
From Spanish Zúñiga, from Basque Zuñiga. Introduced through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos .
Sources 1
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Zuñiga 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CR Costa Rica | #13 | 63,780 | 1 in 80 | 64K | Zuñiga | 99 |
| US United States | #740 | 56,347 | 1 in 5.9K | 56K | Zuniga | 413 |
| HN Honduras | #25 | ≈33,000 est. | ≈1 in 278 | — | Zuniga | 67 |
| CO Colombia | #252 | ≈24,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | 21 | Zuñiga | 97 |
| CL Chile | #33 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 784 | 1 | Zuñiga | 122 |
| EC Ecuador | #81 | 22,381 | 1 in 755 | 22K | Zuñiga | 44 |
| NI Nicaragua | #85 | ≈10,000 est. | ≈1 in 621 | — | Zuniga | 42 |
63,780 people counted by TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. 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; SRCEI — Nombres más comunes (guaguas, 1920–2021); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; the co-datosgov-candidates register; 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)
Zuñiga 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.
In Filipino, Zuniga: a surname from Spanish [in turn from Basque], mostly concentrated in Bulacan, Laguna, Quezon and Rizal
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)
- Rafael Zuñigab. 1963COColombian boxer
- Daniel Barría Zuñigab. 1974CLChilean chess player
- Roberto Mosquera Zuñigab. 1976COColombian association football player
- Rodrigo Sotob. 1980CLnot in their usual nameChilean footballer
- Ismael Ortizb. 1982PAnot in their usual namePanamanian swimmer
- Dante Zuñigab. 1983ARArgentinian association football player
- Cristian Zuñigab. 1992COColombian association football player
- Julio Zuñigab. 1995ARArgentine footballer
- Rodolfo Angelesb. 1999PEnot in their usual namePeruvian footballer
- Pedro Luis Manso ZuñigaESSpanish Roman Catholic prelate
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 13 sources across 9 countries.
Reference works 2
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Zuñiga mean, and where does it come from?
- From Spanish Zúñiga, from Basque Zuñiga. Introduced through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos . Recorded by Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Zuñiga?
- A machine transcription gives /θuɲiɡa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Zuñiga have the most bearers?
- In Costa Rica, the national register counted about 64 thousand people named Zuñiga, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled zuñiga.
- Where is Zuñiga most common?
- Zuñiga is densest in Costa Rica, where the national register counts about 1 in 80 people carrying it.
- How common is the name Zuñiga?
- In Costa Rica, the national register counted 63,780 people named Zuñiga, about 1 in 80 residents.
- How common is Zuñiga compared with other names?
- In Costa Rica, Zuñiga is the 13th most common surname of 8,899 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Zuñiga?
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/zu%C3%B1igaThe 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, “Zuñiga” — the 13th most common surname in Costa Rica. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.