Ballester
surname · Latin script
Meaning: from Lat. ballista 'crossbow'; hence 'armbruster'
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/baʎest̪eɾ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ballester is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Spain than in any other country.
- ESSpain1 in 3.4K(measured from records)
- ARArgentina1 in 25K
- FRFrance≈1 in 31K
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.
- Spain (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 204 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.4K (inferred from the name graph)
14,551 people
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Spain
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)
from Lat. ballista 'crossbow'; hence 'armbruster'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ballester 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | #275 | 14,551 | 1 in 3.4K | 15K | Ballester | 160 |
| PH Philippines | — | ≈2,500 est. | ≈1 in 43K | — | Ballester | 22 |
| FR France | — | ≈2,200 est. | ≈1 in 31K | 264 | Ballester | 204 |
| AR Argentina | — | 1,820 | 1 in 25K | 1.8K | Ballester | 68 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈1,100 est. | ≈1 in 239K | — | Ballester | 4 |
| CU Cuba | #343 | ≈820 est. | ≈1 in 14K | — | Ballester | 18 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 132 | 1 in 26K | 132 | — | 14 |
| AD Andorra | #212 | ≈9 est. | ≈1 in 8.6K | — | Ballester | 5 |
14,551 people counted by INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos). 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: INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public). 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)
Ballester 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.
In Catalan, a surname originating as an occupation
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Mallorca
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
In Italian, var. de Balester
as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
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)
- Carmelo Ballesterb. 1881ESRoman Catholic archbishop
- Gonzalo Torrente Ballesterb. 1910ESSpanish Galician writer (1910–1999)
- Manolita Savalb. 1914MXnot in their usual nameSpanish-Mexican actor and singer
- Manuel Ballesterb. 1919ESSpanish chemist (1919–2005)
- Jesús Huerta de Sotob. 1956ESnot in their usual nameSpanish economist, professor, and author
- Inés Ballesterb. 1958ESSpanish journalist, presenter and television presenter
- Pierre Ballesterb. 1959FRFrench sports journalist
- Jean-François Ballesterb. 1965FRFrench figure skating coach
- Bernabé Ballesterb. 1982ESSpanish footballer
- Pep Ballesteractor
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 27 sources across 15 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES Spain | INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 15K | #370 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 15K | #370 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 1.8K | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1961 | 425 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 302 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1971 | 298 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 264 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1951 | 168 | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 132 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1941 | 123 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1921 | 79 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1931 | 57 | — |
Reference works 6
- 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 Ballester mean, and where does it come from?
- from Lat. ballista 'crossbow'; hence 'armbruster' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Ballester?
- A machine transcription gives /baʎest̪eɾ/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- In which country does Ballester have the most bearers?
- In Spain, the national register counted about 15 thousand people named Ballester, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ballester.
- Where is Ballester most common?
- Ballester is densest in Spain, where the national register counts about 1 in 3.4 thousand people carrying it.
- How common is the name Ballester?
- In Spain, the national register counted 14,551 people named Ballester, about 1 in 3.4 thousand residents.
- How common is Ballester compared with other names?
- In Spain, Ballester is the 275th most common surname of 395,154 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ballester?
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/ballesterThe 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, “Ballester” — the 275th most common surname in Spain. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.