Grillo
surname · Latin script
Meaning: nickname for a cheerful person, from grillo ‘cricket’ (Late Latin grillus)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ˈɡɹɪɫoʊ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Grillo is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Italy than in any other country.
- UYUruguay1 in 3.8K(measured from records)
- ARArgentina1 in 11K
- NINicaragua≈1 in 13K
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.
- Italy (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 180 (measured from records)
- 1 in 3.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈11,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Uruguay
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
nickname for a cheerful person, from grillo ‘cricket’ (Late Latin grillus).
Sources 1
- Dictionary of American Family Names
Attested across 8 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT Italy | — | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.5K | listed | Grillo | 56 |
| US United States | — | 6,355 | 1 in 52K | 6.4K | Grillo | 180 |
| BR Brazil | #878 | 5,093 | 1 in 42K | 5.1K | Grillo | 113 |
| AR Argentina | #868 | 4,032 | 1 in 11K | 4K | Grillo | 80 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 45K | — | Grillo | 17 |
| UY Uruguay | #691 | 885 | 1 in 3.8K | 885 | Grillo | 25 |
| NI Nicaragua | #508 | ≈490 est. | ≈1 in 13K | — | Grillo | 13 |
| CR Costa Rica | #424 | 348 | 1 in 15K | 348 | Grillo | 28 |
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 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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 33 sources across 19 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 6.4K | #5,472 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 6.2K | #5,169 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 5.8K | #5,732 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 5.1K | #2,219 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 4K | — |
| UY Uruguay | INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public) | — | 885 | — |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 348 | #760 |
| IT Italy | Dizionario dei Cognomi Italiani (De Felice, 1978) | — | — | — |
| IT Italy | 意大利语姓名译名手册 (Xinhua Italian Name Manual) | — | — | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 6
- 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)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
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 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?
- A machine transcription gives /ˈɡɹɪɫoʊ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Grillo have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 11 thousand people named Grillo in Italy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled grillo.
- Where is Grillo most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Grillo is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 3.8 thousand people — even though Italy holds more of our records for it.
- 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?
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/grilloThe 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 2026-10-10.