Álvarez
loc · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Álvarez is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country, where it is the 16th most common surname. Recorded meaning: From Álvaro + -ez.
- ESSpain1 in 178(measured from records)
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 179
- ARArgentina1 in 213
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)
- #115 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 533 (measured from records)
- 1 in 57 (inferred from the name graph)
281,150 people
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Alvarez in US United States, AR Argentina, VE Venezuela and 2 more and Àlvarez in UY Uruguay, CR Costa Rica.
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)
From Álvaro + -ez.
Sources 1
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Álvarez 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 | #16 | 281,150 | 1 in 178 | 281K | Alvarez | 264 |
| US United States | #103 | 233,983 | 1 in 1.4K | 234K | Alvarez | 533 |
| AR Argentina | #15 | 213,978 | 1 in 213 | 214K | Alvarez | 186 |
| CO Colombia | #20 | ≈210,000 est. | ≈1 in 236 | 149 | Alvarez | 209 |
| VE Venezuela | #25 | ≈160,000 est. | ≈1 in 179 | 1.3K | Alvarez | 122 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 59,767 | 1 in 57 | 60K | Àlvarez | 116 |
| CR Costa Rica | — | 49,782 | 1 in 102 | 50K | Àlvarez | 136 |
281,150 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: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); asosab — SAIME ID-card names (1896–1996); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) 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)
Álvarez 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 Portuguese, a surname, a mostly obsolete variant of Álvares
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Spanish, a surname originating as a patronymic
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)
- John of the Crossb. 1542ESnot in their usual nameSpanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint (1542–1591)
- Manuel de Godoyb. 1767ESnot in their usual namePrime Minister of Spain (1767-1851)
- Jorge Monttb. 1845CLnot in their usual nameChilean sailor, politician and president (1845-1922)
- Luis Walter Alvarezb. 1911USAmerican experimental physicist, inventor, and professor (1911–1988)
- Luis Echeverríab. 1922MXnot in their usual name57th President of Mexico
- Fernando Cayob. 1968ESnot in their usual nameSpanish actor
- Koldo Álvarezb. 1970ESfootball player/manager
- Fede Álvarezb. 1978UYUruguayan director and producer (born 1978)
- Rafael Márquezb. 1979MXnot in their usual nameMexican association football player
- Adrián López Álvarezb. 1988ESSpanish 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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 11 sources across 8 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO Colombia | Colombia — Función Pública SIGEP II public-servant name corpus (datos.gov.co) | — | 6 | #110 |
Reference works 2
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- 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 Álvarez mean, and where does it come from?
- From Álvaro + -ez. Recorded by Wiktionary.
- In which country does Álvarez have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 281 thousand people named Álvarez, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled alvarez.
- Where is Álvarez most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Álvarez is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 57 people — even though Spain holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Álvarez?
- In Spain, the national register counted 281,150 people named Álvarez, about 1 in 178 residents.
- How common is Álvarez compared with other names?
- In Spain, Álvarez is the 16th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Álvarez?
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/%C3%A1lvarezThe 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, “Álvarez” — the 16th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.