Chamorro
surname · Latin script
Meaning: closely cropped man. The word is first attested in the mid-14th cent, and is of unknown origin, possibly a survi¬ val of a pre-Roman word with cogns
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 17 countries · latest register: INEC, 2024
/t͡ʃaˈmo.ro/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary
Chamorro is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Argentina than in any other country.
- PYParaguay≈1 in 510(inferred from the name graph)
- NINicaragua≈1 in 1.2K
- ECEcuador1 in 1.5K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Chamorro itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Argentina (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 246 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 507 (inferred from the name graph)
27,582 people
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Paraguay, 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)closely cropped man. The word is first attested in the mid-14th cent, and is of unknown origin, possibly a survi¬ val of a pre-Roman word with cogns. in Basque. In the Middle Ages it was applied as an ethnic nickname to the Portuguese, who wore their hair short in contrast with the Castilian custom of allowing it to attain its natural length.
Cited for this meaning 1
- A dictionary of surnames
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where the surname Chamorro is found
(measured from records)Chamorro 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AR Argentina | #267 | 27,582 | 1 in 1.6K | 28K | Chamorro | 92 |
| CO Colombia | #414 | ≈19,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.8K | 11 | Chamorro | 105 |
| PY Paraguay | #105 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 507 | — | Chamorro | 54 |
| ES Spain | #395 | 12,069 | 1 in 4.1K | 12K | Chamorro | 163 |
| EC Ecuador | #329 | 11,415 | 1 in 1.5K | 11K | Chamorro | 51 |
| NI Nicaragua | #165 | ≈5,800 est. | ≈1 in 1.2K | — | Chamorro | 48 |
| UY Uruguay | — | 1,282 | 1 in 2.6K | 1.3K | — | 24 |
27,582 people counted by RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national). 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: RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); the co-datosgov-candidates register; INEC — civil registry names; 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)Chamorro is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, An indigenous native islander of the Mariana Islands consisting of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands of Saipan, Rota, and Tinian.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Violetta, Nicaraguan politician;
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In English, lang., people, Guam
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In ch, Chamorro (language)
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)- Fruto Chamorrob. 1804NI1st President of Nicaragua (1804-1855)
- Emiliano Chamorro Vargasb. 1871NIPresident of Nicaragua (1871-1966)
- Violeta Barrios de Chamorrob. 1929NIPresident of Nicaragua from 1990 to 1997 (1929–2025)
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)29 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 17 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Chamorro come from?
- closely cropped man. The word is first attested in the mid-14th cent, and is of unknown origin, possibly a survi¬ val of a pre-Roman word with cogns. in Basque. Recorded by A dictionary of surnames.
- How do you pronounce Chamorro?
- In Spanish /t͡ʃaˈmo.ro/ (Wiktionary).
- What does the name Chamorro mean?
- Recorded meaning: closely cropped man. The word is first attested in the mid-14th cent, and is of unknown origin, possibly a survi¬ val of a pre-Roman word with cogns.
- Which countries have the most people with the surname Chamorro?
- In Argentina, the national register counted about 28 thousand people named Chamorro, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled chamorro. After it come Colombia, Paraguay, Spain and Ecuador; the country table on this page ranks them.
- How common is the name Chamorro?
- In Argentina, the national register counted 27,582 people named Chamorro, about 1 in 1.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Chamorro compared with other names?
- In Argentina, Chamorro is the 267th most common surname of 398,256 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Chamorro?
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/chamorroThe 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, “Chamorro” — the 267th most common surname in Argentina. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.