Ferreira
surname · Latin script
Meaning: ‘person who lives by a forge’, from a Portuguese surname from Latin ferraria ‘forge’
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 34 countries · latest register: IBGE, 2022
/feˈhe(ɪ̯).ɾa/(recorded in a dictionary) Portuguese · from Wiktionary
Ferreira is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 10th most common surname.
- PTPortugal≈1 in 42(inferred from the name graph)
- UYUruguay1 in 56
- BRBrazil≈1 in 77
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)
- #161 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 411 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 42 (inferred from the name graph)
≈2,700,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames, spellings grouped
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Portugal, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)‘person who lives by a forge’, from a Portuguese surname from Latin ferraria ‘forge’
Cited for this meaning 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Ferreira is found
(measured from records)Ferreira 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 | #10 | ≈2,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 77 | 844 | Ferreira | 294 |
| PT Portugal | #4 | ≈260,000 est. | ≈1 in 42 | — | Ferreira | 245 |
| UY Uruguay | #10 | 60,305 | 1 in 56 | 60K | Ferreira | 104 |
| PY Paraguay | #18 | ≈51,000 est. | ≈1 in 136 | — | Ferreira | 65 |
| AR Argentina | #177 | 42,541 | 1 in 1.1K | 43K | Ferreira | 111 |
| GW Guinea-Bissau | — | ≈12,000 est. | ≈1 in 183 | 16K | — | 16 |
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: IBGE — Nomes (census name API); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); A comprehensive look at the most common surnames in Guinea-Bissau, compiled by the Instituto Nacional de Estatística de. 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)Ferreira 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 Portuguese, a toponym indicating the presence of a iron mine;
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)- Eusébio da Silva Ferreirab. 1942PTPortuguese footballer (1942–2014)
- Rivaldob. 1972BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian association football player
- Paulo Ferreirab. 1979PTPortuguese footballer (born 1979)
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)56 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 34 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Ferreira mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘person who lives by a forge’, from a Portuguese surname from Latin ferraria ‘forge’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Ferreira?
- In the etymology graph, Herrera is a form of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Ferreira?
- It depends on the language: in Portuguese /feˈhe(ɪ̯).ɾa/ (Wiktionary); in Spanish /feˈreiɾa/ (Wiktionary).
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Ferreira?
- Mondonomo estimates about 2.7 million people named Ferreira in Brazil, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ferreira. After it come Portugal, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Ferreira?
- In Uruguay, the national register counted 60,305 people named Ferreira, about 1 in 56 residents.
- How common is Ferreira compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Ferreira is the 10th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ferreira?
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/ferreiraThe 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, “Ferreira” — the 10th most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.