Santana
surname · Latin script
Meaning, in Portuguese: Saint Anne (the mother of Virgin Mary)
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Santana is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Brazil than in any other country, where it is the 45th most common surname.
- DODominican Republic≈1 in 103(inferred from the name graph)
- PRPuerto Rico≈1 in 364
- ECEcuador1 in 515
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)
- #342 (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 415 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 103 (inferred from the name graph)
≈260,000 people, est.
of 19M surnames
recorded for this name
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)
name from any of the numerous places so called from the dedication of their churches to St Anne (see Hanna).
Sources 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
How Santana is read(measured from records)
Santana is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 3 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.
- Portuguese54%
Saint Anne (the mother of Virgin Mary)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish31%
name from any of the numerous places so called from the dedication of their churches to St Anne (see Hanna).
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
- English9.6%
Carlos, rock guitarist
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 We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.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)
Santana 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 | #45 | ≈260,000 est. | ≈1 in 806 | 7.4K | Santana | 233 |
| DO Dominican Republic | #8 | ≈100,000 est. | ≈1 in 103 | — | Santana | 125 |
| US United States | #522 | 60,667 | 1 in 5.5K | 65K | Santana | 415 |
| ES Spain | #77 | 58,815 | 1 in 850 | 59K | Santana | 188 |
| EC Ecuador | #74 | 32,822 | 1 in 515 | 33K | Santana | 57 |
| PR Puerto Rico | #78 | ≈8,800 est. | ≈1 in 364 | — | Santana | 68 |
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); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Santana is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
a weapon (M); a son of Rudra (P);
as a nameSunama Sarit (Hindi) Ten Thousand Sanskrit Names
In German, in den i98oer-Jahren aus den
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In Finnish, essive singular of santa
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)
- Pedro Santanab. 1801DOPresident of the Dominican Republic
- Telê Santanab. 1931BRBrazilian footballer and manager (1931-2006)
- Manuel Santanab. 1938ESSpanish tennis player (1938–2021)
- Carlos Santanab. 1947MXAmerican guitarist
- Joel Santanab. 1948BRBrazilian association football player and manager
- Jonathan Santanab. 1981ARParaguayan association football player
- Cléber Santanab. 1981BRBrazilian association football player (1981–2016)
- Felipe Santanab. 1986BRBrazilian footballer
- Luan Santanab. 1991BRBrazilian singer-songwriter (born 1991)
- Edersonb. 1993BRnot in their usual nameBrazilian goalkeeper
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(measured from records)
Attested in 86 sources across 41 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 7.4K | #2,612 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 6K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 4.9K | #2,417 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.8K | #2,544 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.7K | #2,544 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.1K | #2,417 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 285 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 92 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2010 | 41 | — |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 21 | #53,545 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 20 | #27,328 |
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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- 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
- What does the name Santana mean?
- In Portuguese, Saint Anne (the mother of Virgin Mary)
- Where does the name Santana come from?
- name from any of the numerous places so called from the dedication of their churches to St Anne (see Hanna). Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- In which country does Santana have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 263 thousand people named Santana in Brazil, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled santana.
- How common is the name Santana?
- In the United States, the national register counted 60,667 people named Santana in 2010, about 1 in 5.5 thousand residents.
- How common is Santana compared with other names?
- In Brazil, Santana is the 45th most common surname of 424,864 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Santana?
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/santanaThe 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, “Santana” — the 45th most common surname in Brazil. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.