Macho

loc · Latin script

Meaning: possibly a nickname for a forceful person or a metonymic occupational name for a smith, from macho ‘sledgehammer’ (Latin marculus ‘hammer’)

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Macho is a name written in the Latin script, most frequently recorded in Mexico.

rarermore common
  • MXMexico
  • ESSpain

Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Mexico (inferred from the name graph)

no count published

Sources
116 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

possibly a nickname for a forceful person or a metonymic occupational name for a smith, from macho ‘sledgehammer’ (Latin marculus ‘hammer’).

Sources 1

  • Dictionary of American Family Names

Attested across 23 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Macho counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Where Macho is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
MX Mexico——Macho31
ES Spain—4KMacho116
SK Slovakia—661——
US United States—644—98
CZ Czechia—503——

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 — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); JÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census); Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; KdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end). 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)

Macho is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • English name13 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States

    Also written Machó, Màçho, Măchõ, Mâçhô, Mãçhõ

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Machó, Makho

  • Portuguese name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Brazil

    Also written Machó

  • Hindi name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India

    Also written Machó, Mächö

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Machó

42 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)

Macho 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 Spanish, nickname from macho ‘mule’, applied either to denote an idiot or alternatively a virile, strong man (Latin masculus).

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In Spanish, Sp. macho male (L masculus; cf. Male). 2. nickname for a forceful person or metonymic occupa¬ tional name for a smith, from Sp. macho sledgehammer (probably from LL marculus hammer (cf. Martel), crossed with Sp. Maza). Mack 1. Scots (Berwicks.): from the ON personal name Makkr, a form of Magnus. 2. Chiefly U.S.: simplified form of any of the various

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • In Spanish, from the old secular personal name Macso. The spelling is either Americanized, or an archaic form. In 15th- and 16th-century documents the family name is recorded in the form Macho, in which form the name is also found in Slovakia.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • In French, One who is excessively or aggressively masculine or misogynistic; a chauvinist

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

  • In Portuguese, male (belonging or referring to the sex having the smaller gametes)

    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)

18001850190019502000José Cos y Macho, b. 1838Victorio Macho, b. 1887Fritz Macho, b. 1899Alejandro Díez Macho, b. 1916Nati Mistral, b. 1928Thomas Macho, b. 1952Marta Macho Stadler, b. 1962Palo Macho, b. 1965Jürgen Macho, b. 1977Antonio Míguez Macho, b. 1979

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 32 sources across 20 countries.

Official registers attesting Macho
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
ES SpainINE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal)—4K#1,302
ES SpainINE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos)—4K#1,302
SK SlovakiaJÚĽŠ SAV — Databáza priezvisk na Slovensku (surname database, 1995 census)1995661—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20202020644#37,209
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20002000572#36,807
CZ CzechiaKdeJsme.cz — četnost jmen a příjmení (MVČR population register front-end)—503#2,822
CZ CzechiaMVČR — living population register 2017—501#3,015
US United StatesCensus Bureau — Surname Frequency 20102010498#43,369
US United Stateswru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.)———

Reference works 5

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 Macho mean, and where does it come from?
possibly a nickname for a forceful person or a metonymic occupational name for a smith, from macho ‘sledgehammer’ (Latin marculus ‘hammer’). Recorded by Dictionary of American Family Names.
In which country does Macho have the most bearers?
Macho is most frequently recorded in Mexico, where it is most often spelled macho.

What do you want to know about Macho?

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

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, “Macho”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Macho parses inside a full name →