Tavares
surname · Portuguese · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Tavares is a surname, most frequently recorded in Portugal, where it is the 39th most common surname. It appears chiefly in Portuguese and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: seven minor places so called, first recorded in the forms Taavares and Thalavares.
- CVCape Verde1 in 84◐
- GWGuinea-Bissau1 in 104
- PTPortugal1 in 275
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈19K ●
- #573 ●
- 2 ●
- Sources
- 312 ●
- 1 in 4.6K ◐
across 12 countries
of 21M surnames
recorded for this name
276K records
Official registry-verified
Switzerland
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Тавареш in RU Russia.
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●
seven minor places so called, first recorded in the forms Taavares and Thalavares. It is probably a deriv. of the personal name Talavus (see Talavera). Vars.: Teal(l) Tear see McIntyre Tearall see Tyrrell
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PT Portugal | #39 | 30,927 | 12K rec. | — | — | Tavares | 168 |
| MX Mexico | #990 | 27,358 | 23K rec. | — | 125 | Tavares | 117 |
| GW Guinea-Bissau | #34 | 16,047 | 11 rec. | — | 16K | Tavares | 14 |
| US United States | — | 12,766 | 46K rec. | 1 in 26K | 13K | Tavares | 312 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 3,904 | 3.5K rec. | — | listed | Tavares | 108 |
| VE Venezuela | — | 2,842 | 2.7K rec. | — | — | Tavares | 33 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #134 | 2,406 | 2K rec. | — | — | Tavares | 39 |
| CA Canada | — | 2,016 | 1.9K rec. | — | 1 | Tavares | 107 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 1,825△ | 498 rec. | 1 in 4.6K | 1.8K | Tavares | 56 |
| ES Spain | — | 1,284 | 1.9K rec. | 1 in 39K | 1.3K | Tavares | 89 |
| CV Cape Verde | #1 | 1,251 | 311 rec. | — | 24 | Tavares | 49 |
| AO Angola | #35 | 1,196 | 1.2K rec. | — | 3 | Tavares | 48 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Portuguese2M91%
- English69K3%
- French52K2%
- Spanish52K2%
- ptbr6.8K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Portuguese | 2,039,589 | 91% |
| English | 69,029 | 3% |
| French | 51,883 | 2% |
| Spanish | 51,825 | 2% |
| ptbr | 6,794 | 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●
Tavares 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 English, city. FL
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
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 |
|---|---|
| 1974 | 60 |
| 1975 | 162 |
| 1976 | 168 |
| 1977 | 170 |
| 1978 | 162 |
| 1979 | 143 |
| 1980 | 133 |
| 1981 | 115 |
| 1982 | 88 |
| 1983 | 106 |
| 1984 | 90 |
| 1985 | 60 |
| 1986 | 65 |
| 1987 | 46 |
| 1988 | 38 |
| 1989 | 43 |
| 1990 | 46 |
| 1991 | 44 |
| 1992 | 33 |
| 1993 | 37 |
| 1994 | 63 |
| 1995 | 39 |
| 1996 | 65 |
| 1997 | 51 |
| 1998 | 50 |
| 1999 | 59 |
| 2000 | 53 |
| 2001 | 50 |
| 2002 | 58 |
| 2003 | 41 |
| 2004 | 60 |
| 2005 | 47 |
| 2006 | 57 |
| 2007 | 44 |
| 2008 | 47 |
| 2009 | 37 |
| 2010 | 43 |
| 2011 | 25 |
| 2012 | 42 |
| 2013 | 24 |
| 2014 | 24 |
| 2015 | 18 |
| 2016 | 21 |
| 2017 | 21 |
| 2018 | 27 |
| 2019 | 14 |
| 2020 | 18 |
| 2021 | 17 |
| 2022 | 18 |
| 2023 | 9 |
| 2024 | 15 |
| 2025 | 19 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 52 years between 1974–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Carlos Tavaresb. 1958PTPortuguese businessman
- Liob. 1962PTnot in their usual nameBelgian actress and singer
- Júlio Tavaresb. 1988CVCape Verdean association football player
- Stopirab. 1988CVnot in their usual nameCape Verdean association football player
- Chelsea Tavaresb. 1991USAmerican actress
- Walter Tavaresb. 1992CVCape Verdean basketball player (born 1992)
- Andre Gomesb. 1993PTnot in their usual namePortuguese association football player (born 1993)
- Fabinho Tavaresb. 1993BRBrazilian association football player (born 1993)
- Nuno Tavaresb. 2000PTPortuguese association football player
- António Silvab. 2003PTnot in their usual namePortuguese footballer (born 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 44 sources across 27 countries.
Reference works 4
- 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)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 190 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Tavares?
- We estimate roughly 19 thousand people bear Tavares (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
- In which country does Tavares have the most bearers?
- Tavares is most frequently recorded in Portugal, where it is most often spelled tavares.
- How common is Tavares compared with other names?
- In Portugal, Tavares is the 39th most common surname of 42,514 surnames recorded there.
- What does the name Tavares mean?
- Recorded meaning: seven minor places so called, first recorded in the forms Taavares and Thalavares.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/tavaresThe 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, “Tavares” — the 39th most common surname in Portugal. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.