Cruz

surname · Spanish · Latin script

Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published

Cruz is a surname, most frequently recorded in Mexico, where it is the 10th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Spanish and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: from the Spanish or Portuguese personal name Cruz, or person from places called (La) Cruz; from cruz ‘cross’.

rarermore common
  • HNHonduras1 in 72◐
  • SVEl Salvador1 in 74
  • MXMexico1 in 76

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈950K ●

across 15 countries

#91 ●

of 21M surnames

Sources
491 ●

11M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 94 ◐

Peru

Spellings & scripts●

Locally spelled Crúz in GT Guatemala and Crüz in DO Dominican Republic.

Meaning & origin●

from the Spanish or Portuguese personal name Cruz, or person from places called (La) Cruz; from cruz ‘cross’.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Cruz is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MX Mexico#104,833,1994.5M rec.—29KCruz252
BR Brazil#561,921,297555K rec.—395Cruz255
PH Philippines#31,000,590684K rec.——Cruz185
SV El Salvador#12540,430337K rec.——Cruz92
PE Peru#10340,7161.5M rec.1 in 94454KCruz131
US United States#198334,2011M rec.1 in 995343KCruz491
HN Honduras#6204,280222K rec.——Cruz85
CO Colombia#48160,10375K rec.—75Cruz185
AR Argentina#5695,805699K rec.1 in 47596KCruz139
ES Spain#5178,630184K rec.1 in 63679KCruz234
EC Ecuador#4166,309△4.8K rec.1 in 25566KCruz85
CR Costa Rica—30,53765K rec.1 in 16731K—119

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Spanish11M61%
  • English3M16%
  • Portuguese2.3M12%
  • Aymara454K2%
  • 261K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Spanish11,382,07461%
English2,957,54216%
Portuguese2,277,36612%
Aymara453,8872%
261,2351%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Cruz is also recorded as 6 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname3.4M records spelled Cruz48 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Peru, Ecuador

    Languages: English, Dutch

    Also written Crüz, Crúz, Çruz, Çrüz, Crùz

  • a separate surname297K records spelled Cruz5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Ecuador, India, United Kingdom

    Also written C-Ruz, Cruź, Crúz

  • French surname192K records spelled Cruz18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, France, Philippines, United States

    Languages: French, Catalan

    Also written Crùz, Crüz, Crúz, Črūz, Crûz

  • Indonesian surname75K records spelled Cruz8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Indonesia, Peru, United States

    Languages: Indonesian, Filipino, Malagasy

    Also written Crüz, Čřűž, Ĉruz, Črüz, Çrüz

  • Hindi surname59K records spelled Cruz10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Peru, United States, Philippines, India

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Çr̸űż, Crùz, Crüz, Crúz, Črüz

  • German surname45K records spelled Cruz20 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Germany, Switzerland, Philippines

    Languages: German, English, Dutch

    Also written Cruez, Crüz, Çrûz, Cruź, Çrüęz

112 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Cruz is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Spanish, Latin crux, 'cross'; Christian symbol of redemption.

    as a nameDiccionario etimológico de nombres propios

  • In Portuguese, cross

    as a wordA Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

  • In English, A surname from Ibero-Romance.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Portuguese, cross (geometrical figure)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Como el cristal

    as a name25,000 nombres de bebé. La mejor guía para escoger el nombre adecuado

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●

05001K1.5K1900195020001.3K · 2013

Show as table
Cruz in SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present), United States, 1880–2025
Yearrecords
18806
18908
18926
18955
18966
18996
19006
19017
190210
19035
19049
190512
190611
190713
19089
190910
191017
191116
191220
191327
191431
191538
191628
191738
191847
191967
192071
192168
192262
192384
192468
192585
192684
192775
192877
192982
193064
193169
193267
193364
193453
193573
193662
193760
193877
193970
194070
194157
194277
194375
194461
194559
194676
194779
194876
1949100
195087
195185
195287
195380
195471
195577
195687
195779
195896
195984
196082
196182
196277
196372
196485
196564
196676
196759
196875
196987
197068
197163
197274
197370
197485
197571
197681
197783
1978115
197978
198090
198190
1982102
198394
1984104
1985120
1986152
1987168
1988173
1989206
1990200
1991189
1992169
1993181
1994208
1995227
1996219
1997229
1998261
1999243
2000282
2001333
2002302
2003359
2004406
2005477
2006524
2007672
2008846
2009906
2010991
20111,098
20121,232
20131,250
20141,224
20151,065
20161,015
2017970
20181,022
20191,115
20201,098
20211,117
20221,066
20231,015
20241,115
20251,025

US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 132 years between 1880–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

1900195020002050Pedro Infante Sr., b. 1917Celia Cruz, b. 1925Camarón de la Isla, b. 1950Manuel Marrero Cruz, b. 1963Ted Cruz, b. 1970Penélope Cruz, b. 1974Ulises Cruz, b. 1974Taio Cruz, b. 1980Dominick Cruz, b. 1985Oliver Cruz, b. 2004

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 95 sources across 49 countries.

Official registers attesting Cruz
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
PE PeruRENIEC — DNI population names2019454K#8
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020343K#55
PE PeruRENIEC — Nombres y apellidos más frecuentes (frequency portal)2025341K#24
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010334K#57
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000231K#82
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—96K—
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—79K#50
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—79K#50
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names202466K#48
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—31K#68
MX MexicoRENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset)—29K#10
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202026K#1,165

Reference works 8

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (Tom II: C-D)
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • 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 · 1,158 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Cruz?
We estimate roughly 950 thousand people bear Cruz (counting its spellings and scripts) across 15 countries in our records.
In which country does Cruz have the most bearers?
Cruz is most frequently recorded in Mexico, where it is most often spelled cruz.
How common is Cruz compared with other names?
In Mexico, Cruz is the 10th most common surname of 198,716 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Cruz mean?
Recorded meaning: from the Spanish or Portuguese personal name Cruz, or person from places called (La) Cruz; from cruz ‘cross’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/cruz

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Cruz” — the 10th most common surname in Mexico. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Cruz parses inside a full name →