Cervantes
surname · Latin script
Meaning: Most probably it is a patr
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/θerbantes/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Cervantes is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Mexico it is the 56th most common surname.
- CRCosta Rica1 in 1.5K(measured from records)
- PEPeru≈1 in 2.2K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 2.8K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- #746 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 414 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.5K (inferred from the name graph)
82,161 people, 2010
of 19M surnames
Highest-authority source
Costa Rica
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Most probably it is a patr. from a medieval given name Servanto, arising as the result of a cross between L serviens, gen. servientis, ‘servant (of the Lord)’ and servandus ‘he who shall be saved’. There seems to have been some fur¬ ther confusion in the spelling with Sp. ciervo stag (cf. Vars.: Chadwyck, Chaddock, Chattock; Shadwick, Shaddick, Shaddock, Shattock.
Sources 1
- The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cervantes 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 82,161 | 1 in 4K | 82K | Cervantes | 414 |
| PH Philippines | #331 | ≈39,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | — | Cervantes | 87 |
| CO Colombia | #378 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | 13 | Cervantes | 96 |
| PE Peru | #355 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | — | Cervantes | 89 |
| KE Kenya | — | ≈8,000 est. | ≈1 in 6.7K | — | Cervantes | 2 |
| EC Ecuador | — | 6,402 | 1 in 2.6K | 6.4K | Cervantes | 52 |
| CR Costa Rica | #187 | 3,364 | 1 in 1.5K | 3.4K | Cervantes | 49 |
| MX Mexico | #56 | — | — | 5.7K | Cervantes | 242 |
82,161 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. 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: RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; the co-datosgov-candidates register; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; INEC — civil registry names. 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).
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Miguel de Cervantesb. 1547ESSpanish novelist, poet, and playwright (1547-1616)
- Vicente Cervantesb. 1758ESSpanish botanist (1758-1829)
- Francisco Bolognesi Cervantesb. 1816PEPeruvian military hero (1816-1880)
- Antonio Cervantesb. 1945COColombian boxer
- Manuel Cervantesb. 1957ESSpanish association football player
- Nemesio Oseguera Cervantesb. 1966MXMexican drug lord (1966–2026)
- Elizabeth Cervantesb. 1975MXMexican actress
- Martha Higaredab. 1983MXnot in their usual nameMexican actress, writer, producer (b. 1983)
- Álvaro Cervantesb. 1989ESSpanish actor
- Iñigo Cervantes Huegunb. 1989ESSpanish tennis player (born 1989)
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)
Attested in 41 sources across 22 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 82K | #387 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 79K | #404 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 58K | #520 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 6.4K | #631 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | — | 6.4K | — |
| MX Mexico | RENAPO — name frequencies (eduardofv dataset) | — | 5.7K | #60 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 3.4K | #295 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 1995 | 139 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2010 | 119 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2008 | 117 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2006 | 113 | — |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — Visualizador de Nombres y Apellidos, per-token query API (1900–2024) | 2009 | 112 | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Cervantes come from?
- Most probably it is a patr. from a medieval given name Servanto, arising as the result of a cross between L serviens, gen. servientis, ‘servant (of the Lord)’ and servandus ‘he who shall be saved’. Recorded by The Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles.
- How do you pronounce Cervantes?
- A machine transcription gives /θerbantes/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Cervantes mean?
- Recorded meaning: Most probably it is a patr.
- In which country does Cervantes have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 82 thousand people named Cervantes, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cervantes.
- Where is Cervantes most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cervantes is densest in Costa Rica — about 1 in 1.5 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Cervantes?
- In the United States, the national register counted 82,161 people named Cervantes in 2010, about 1 in 4.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Cervantes compared with other names?
- In Mexico, Cervantes is the 56th most common surname of 206,803 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Cervantes?
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/cervantesThe 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, “Cervantes” — the 56th most common surname in Mexico. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.