Grillo

surname · Latin script

Meaning: nickname for a cheerful person, from grillo ‘cricket’ (Late Latin grillus) (Dictionary of American Family Names)

(measured from records)Officially recorded in 19 countries · latest register: Census Bureau, 2020

/ˈɡɾi.ʃo/(recorded in a dictionary) Spanish · from Wiktionary

Say it inExplore pronunciation →

Grillo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.

  • ITItaly≈1 in 3Kfew records(inferred from the name graph)
  • UYUruguay1 in 3.8K
  • ARArgentina1 in 11K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Italy (inferred from the name graph)

≈19,000 people, est.

Record sources
180 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

≈1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Italy, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)Make your nomograph ✦

How to pronounce Grillo

  • Spanish:/ˈɡɾi.ʃo/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
  • Portuguese:/ɡɾillu/(machine-generated) model-generated
  • Italian:/ˈɡril.lo/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary

Readings marked model-generated were transcribed by a model; the others are quoted from the dictionary named.

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)

nickname for a cheerful person, from grillo ‘cricket’ (Late Latin grillus).

Cited for this meaning 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Grillo is found

(measured from records)

Grillo 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.

Where Grillo is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
IT Italy—≈19,000 est.≈1 in 3KlistedGrillo56
US United States—6,3551 in 52K6.4KGrillo180
BR Brazil#8785,0931 in 42K5.1KGrillo113
AR Argentina#8684,0321 in 11K4KGrillo80
GB United Kingdom—≈1,600 est.≈1 in 43K—Grillo17
UY Uruguay#6918851 in 3.8K885Grillo25
NI Nicaragua#508≈550 est.≈1 in 13K—Grillo13
CR Costa Rica#4243481 in 15K348Grillo28

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); IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; the italian-surnames-defelice-1978 register. 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 names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Grillo is also recorded as 2 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English surname22 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Italy

    Languages: English, German, Arabic

    Also written Grilló

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Grilló

44 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses

(measured from records)

Grillo is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Italian, cricket (insect)

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Italian, do lat. gryllus, grilo; apelativo jocoso ou referência a máquina de guerra.

    as a nameDicionário dos sobrenomes italianos

  • In Italian, Variante di Grilli

    as a nameDizionario dei cognomi italiani

  • In Galician, wedge used for splitting stone

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • In Basque, "(AN-gip), vencejo" A . Cf. VocNav : " Grillo: vencejo ( Apus apus ). (Eslava, San Martín de Unx)".

    as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia

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.

How to address them

(machine-generated)
FormalDear Grillo,
InformalHello,

Evidence

(measured from records)

33 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 19 countries.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Grillo mean, and where does it come from?
nickname for a cheerful person, from grillo ‘cricket’ (Late Latin grillus). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
How do you pronounce Grillo?
It depends on the language: in Spanish /ˈɡɾi.ʃo/ (Wiktionary); in Portuguese /ɡɾillu/; in Italian /ˈɡril.lo/ (Wiktionary). Transcriptions are machine-generated except where a dictionary is named.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Grillo?
Mondonomo estimates about 19 thousand people named Grillo in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled grillo. After it come United States, Brazil, Argentina and United Kingdom; the country table on this page ranks them.
How common is the name Grillo?
In the United States, the national register counted 6,355 people named Grillo in 2010, about 1 in 52 thousand residents.
How common is Grillo compared with other names?
In Costa Rica, Grillo is the 424th most common surname of 8,899 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Grillo?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/grillo

The 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, “Grillo” — the 424th most common surname in Costa Rica. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Grillo parses inside a full name →