Lopez

surname · Spanish · Latin script

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

Lopez is a surname, most frequently recorded in Mexico, where it is the 4th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Spanish and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: ‘Son of Lope’, a medieval Spanish personal name perhaps ultimately from Latin lupus ‘wolf’.

rarermore common
  • NINicaragua1 in 27◐
  • HNHonduras1 in 40
  • MXMexico1 in 42

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

≈3.1M ●

across 9 countries

#33 ●

of 21M surnames

5 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
530 ●

23M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 57 ◐

Spain

Spellings & scripts●

LopezLatin · Spanish●24M records
ЛопесCyrillic · Russian●1.4K records
โลเปซThai · Thai●101 records
ΛόπεζGreek · Greek●1 records
로페즈Hangul · Korean●0 records

Locally spelled López in CL Chile, GT Guatemala, UY Uruguay.

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●

‘Son of Lope’, a medieval Spanish personal name perhaps ultimately from Latin lupus ‘wolf’.

Sources 1

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

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

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

Where Lopez is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MX Mexico#48,693,2467.4M rec.—60KLopez293
VE Venezuela#9957,787922K rec.—2.1KLopez145
SV El Salvador#3941,110524K rec.——Lopez123
US United States#14874,5235.5M rec.1 in 380879KLopez530
ES Spain#4871,3801.5M rec.1 in 57871KLopez305
CO Colombia#3764,389344K rec.—6.2KLopez229
PE Peru#12524,8181.3M rec.1 in 61525KLopez149
AR Argentina#5520,8972.5M rec.1 in 87521KLopez193
NI Nicaragua#1504,314501K rec.—801Lopez102
HN Honduras#2371,265367K rec.——Lopez106
PH Philippines#30243,467423K rec.——Lopez170
EC Ecuador#26170,052△11K rec.1 in 99170KLopez119

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

Languages●

  • Spanish24M70%
  • English4.3M13%
  • 943K3%
  • Catalan872K3%
  • French329K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Spanish24,172,95870%
English4,311,26113%
942,6883%
Catalan871,7673%
French329,3581%

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◐

Lopez is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Catalan surname1.2M records spelled Lopez18 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Spain, France, United States, Philippines

    Languages: Catalan, French

    Also written López, Lòpez, Lopèz, Lopéz, Lõpez

  • a separate surname966K records spelled Lopez15 spellings in the group

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

    Also written López, Lo-Pez, Lopéz, Lòpez, Lôpez

  • Turkish surname13K records spelled Lopez5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Peru, Philippines

    Languages: Turkish, Uzbek, Azerbaijani

    Also written López, Lopéz

  • Croatian surname12K records spelled Lopez56 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Spain, Peru, Philippines

    Languages: Croatian, Bulgarian, Serbian

    Also written López, Lopes, Лопез, Lòpez, Лопес

95 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●

Lopez 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.

  • patronymic from the medieval personal name Lope (from Latin lupus ‘wolf’). This is one of the commonest of all Spanish surnames.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Italian, variante gráfica de Lopes.

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • In Cebuano, a common surname from Spanish, common across Visayas and Mindanao.

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

  • In roa-opt, 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.

Over time●

01K2K3K4K1900195020003.1K · 1995

Show as table
Lopez in INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024), Ecuador, 1900–2024
Yearrecords
190010
190124
190235
190334
190463
190561
190673
190778
190886
1909113
1910111
1911124
1912122
1913139
1914162
1915152
1916175
1917161
1918203
1919202
1920217
1921262
1922254
1923281
1924288
1925298
1926321
1927298
1928369
1929397
1930407
1931365
1932416
1933436
1934447
1935483
1936483
1937504
1938526
1939545
1940530
1941545
1942622
1943608
1944663
1945722
1946712
1947790
1948835
1949818
1950921
1951904
1952953
1953977
19541,043
19551,148
19561,124
19571,165
19581,207
19591,207
19601,266
19611,341
19621,374
19631,501
19641,472
19651,861
19662,358
19671,586
19681,620
19691,626
19701,698
19711,827
19721,769
19731,850
19741,840
19751,907
19762,028
19772,153
19782,056
19792,111
19802,120
19812,223
19822,266
19832,181
19842,221
19852,603
19862,398
19872,221
19882,353
19892,160
19902,147
19912,236
19922,397
19932,346
19942,655
19953,113
19962,323
19972,196
19982,706
19992,724
20002,638
20012,511
20022,497
20032,519
20042,374
20052,429
20062,691
20072,681
20082,958
20092,875
20102,877
20112,731
20122,670
20132,541
20142,485
20152,431
20162,272
20172,245
20182,307
20192,210
20201,876
20211,984
20221,910
20231,810
20241,478

EC INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) — 125 years between 1900–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

14001600180020002200Ruy López de Segura, b. 1530Juan Negrín, b. 1892Adolfo López Mateos, b. 1910José María Aznar, b. 1953Lopez Obrador, b. 1953Jennifer Lopez, b. 1969Robert Lopez, b. 1975Carlos Marchena, b. 1979Seth Rollins, b. 1986Fermín López, b. 2003

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 69 sources across 41 countries.

Official registers attesting Lopez
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020879K#12
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010875K#12
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—871K#5
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—871K#5
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000622K#21
AR ArgentinaRENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national)—521K—
EC EcuadorINEC — civil registry names2024170K#6
CR Costa RicaTSE — electoral roll (padrón) names—85K#10
MX MexicoRENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset)—60K#4
BR BrazilIBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname)—37K#521
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000)19915.4K—
CH SwitzerlandBFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames)20243.6K#188

Reference works 7

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • 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)
  • Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 242 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Lopez?
We estimate roughly 3.1 million people bear Lopez (counting its spellings and scripts) across 9 countries in our records.
In which country does Lopez have the most bearers?
Lopez is most frequently recorded in Mexico, where it is most often spelled lopez.
How common is Lopez compared with other names?
In Mexico, Lopez is the 4th most common surname of 198,716 surnames recorded there.
What does the name Lopez mean?
Recorded meaning: ‘Son of Lope’, a medieval Spanish personal name perhaps ultimately from Latin lupus ‘wolf’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/lopez

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, “Lopez” — the 4th most common surname in Mexico. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Lopez parses inside a full name →