Cantu
surname · Spanish · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Cantu is a surname, most frequently recorded in Mexico. In Heard & McDonald Islands it is the 8th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Spanish and English, written in the Latin script.
- MXMexico1 in 2.3K◐
- GTGuatemala1 in 5K
- USUnited States1 in 6.8K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈75K ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 384 ●
- 1 in 4.3K ◐
across 9 countries
recorded for this name
504K records
Official registry-verified
Finland
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Cantú in ES Spain.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
No verified etymology recorded for this name yet — the entries below are drawn from usage statistics and the name graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MX Mexico | #273 | 162,186 | 132K rec. | — | 1.4K | Cantu | 199 |
| US United States | #704 | 49,126 | 310K rec. | 1 in 6.8K | 49K | Cantu | 384 |
| BR Brazil | — | 17,125△ | 1.7K rec. | 1 in 12K | 17K | Cantu | 63 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 10,741 | 11K rec. | — | listed | Cantu | 40 |
| PE Peru | — | 9,595 | 10K rec. | — | — | Cantu | 28 |
| CA Canada | #758 | 8,538 | 8.7K rec. | — | — | Cantu | 38 |
| ES Spain | — | 5,815△ | 169 rec. | 1 in 8.6K | 5.8K | Cantú | 36 |
| AU Australia | — | 2,708 | 2.7K rec. | — | — | Cantu | 33 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 2,522 | 2.6K rec. | — | — | Cantu | 11 |
| IT Italy | — | 2,312 | 2.3K rec. | — | 1 | Cantu | 40 |
| GT Guatemala | #305 | 2,119 | 2.1K rec. | — | — | Cantu | 10 |
| AR Argentina | — | 1,910 | 1.8K rec. | 1 in 24K | 1.9K | Cantu | 35 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Spanish272K43%
- English265K42%
- 37K6%
- Italian11K2%
- Portuguese8K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | 271,649 | 43% |
| English | 265,006 | 42% |
| 36,990 | 6% | |
| Italian | 11,132 | 2% |
| Portuguese | 8,044 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Cantu is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Latin, ablative singular of cantus
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sdc, how much (to what extent)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In sdn, singing, chant
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Corsican, singing
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.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1891 | 7 |
| 1901 | 2 |
| 1911 | 6 |
| 1921 | 5 |
| 1931 | 3 |
| 1941 | 8 |
| 1951 | 10 |
| 1961 | 9 |
| 1971 | 4 |
| 1981 | 3 |
| 1991 | 6 |
FR INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) — 11 years between 1891–1991. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Leonardo Cantu Sienrab. 1911UYUruguayan painter
- María Cantu Sienrab. 1914UYUruguayan painter
- Emilio Cantub. 1926USAmerican politician
- Soledad Luévano Cantúb. 1959MXMexican politician
- Rachael Cantub. 1981USAmerican musician
- Rolando Cantub. 1981MXMexican football player
- Edén Muñozb. 1990MXnot in their usual nameMexican singer-songwriter and music producer
- Nicolas Cantub. 2003MXMexican-American actor
- Juan Carlos Cantuactor
- Robert Cantuneurosurgeon and sports medicine researcher
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●
Attested in 25 sources across 17 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 49K | #704 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 48K | #691 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 40K | #793 |
| MX Mexico | RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset) | — | 1.4K | #257 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 962 | #9,631 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 251 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 100 | #27,509 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 100 | #27,429 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 10 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | — | 10 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 9 | — |
| CH Switzerland | BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames) | 2024 | 8 | #72,019 |
Reference works 2
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- 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 2026-09-12 data build · 45 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Cantu?
- We estimate roughly 75 thousand people bear Cantu (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
- In which country does Cantu have the most bearers?
- Cantu is most frequently recorded in Mexico, where it is most often spelled cantu.
- How common is Cantu compared with other names?
- In Mexico, Cantu is the 273rd most common surname of 198,716 surnames recorded there.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cantuThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
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, “Cantu” — the 273rd most common surname in Mexico. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.