Alcantara
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Spanish: places, for example in the provinces of Caceres, Cadiz, and Valencia, so called from the Arabic def. art. al + qantara Alexander Alcaraz arch, bridge. The dim
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 22 countries
/alkantaɾa/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Alcantara is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country. In the Dominican Republic it is the 29th most common surname.
- DODominican Republic≈1 in 237(inferred from the name graph)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 1.2K
- PEPeru≈1 in 1.4K
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.
- Brazil (inferred from the name graph)
- #913 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 348 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 237 (inferred from the name graph)
≈120,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Dominican Republic, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)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)places, for example in the provinces of Caceres, Cadiz, and Valencia, so called from the Arabic def. art. al + qantara Alexander Alcaraz arch, bridge. The dim. Alcantarilla is still in use in Spain as a vocab. word. 2. topographic name for someone living near an alder tree (OE alor). Cogn.: Cat.: Alcantara. Vars. (of 2): Nalder, Alderman.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
How Alcantara is read
(measured from records)Alcantara is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- Spanish50%
places, for example in the provinces of Caceres, Cadiz, and Valencia, so called from the Arabic def. art. al + qantara Alexander Alcaraz arch, bridge. The dim. Alcantarilla is still in use in Spain as a vocab. word. 2. topographic name for someone living near an alder tree (OE alor). Cogn.: Cat.: Alcantara. Vars. (of 2): Nalder, Alderman.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
- Portuguese28%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Alcantara in Portuguese.
- English17%
commune, Spain
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Alcantara 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | #143 | ≈120,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 103 | Alcantara | 187 |
| PH Philippines | #48 | ≈89,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Alcantara | 152 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | — | Alcantara | 32 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #29 | ≈44,000 est. | ≈1 in 237 | — | Alcantara | 65 |
| PE Peru | #193 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.4K | — | Alcantara | 86 |
| ES Spain | #328 | 14,020 | 1 in 3.6K | 14K | Alcantara | 136 |
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: Brasil.IO genero-nomes (IBGE Censo 2010 mirror, CC-BY-SA); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal). 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)Alcantara 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.
synonym of Heterocoma (“flowering plant genus”)
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)- Glete de Alcântarab. 1910BRBrazilian nurse, researcher and university teacher (1910-1974)
- Carlos Alcántarab. 1948UYUruguayan bicycle racer
- Virginia Alcantarab. 1964BRBrazilian politician
- Renata Gilb. 1971BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian jurist and magistrate
- Sergio Alcántarab. 1996DODominican baseball player
- Kyline Alcantarab. 2002PHFilipino actress
- Victoria Alcantarab. 2006AUAustralian figure skater
- Marisol AlcantaraUSAmerican politician in New York City
- Miguel Ángel Martín-DelgadoESnot in their usual nameresearcher
- Ricardo AlcantaraESresearcher, ORCID id # 0000-0002-6364-6728
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).
How to address them
(machine-generated)Evidence
(measured from records)38 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 161K | #208 |
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 14K | #392 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 14K | #392 |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 Alcantara mean, and where does it come from?
- places, for example in the provinces of Caceres, Cadiz, and Valencia, so called from the Arabic def. art. al + qantara Alexander Alcaraz arch, bridge. The dim. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- How do you pronounce Alcantara?
- A machine transcription gives /alkantaɾa/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Alcantara have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 119 thousand people named Alcantara in Brazil, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled alcantara.
- How common is the name Alcantara?
- In Spain, the national register counted 14,020 people named Alcantara, about 1 in 3.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Alcantara compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Alcantara is the 143rd most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Alcantara?
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/alcantaraThe 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, “Alcantara” — the 143rd most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.