Viramontes last name popularity, history, and meaning

Find out how popular the last name Viramontes is in the United States and learn more about the meaning, history, and race and ethnic origin of people in America who are named Viramontes.

Meaning of Viramontes

A habitational surname derived from a place name meaning "green mountains" in Spanish.

Viramontes, like all of the last names we have data for, is identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as a surname which has more than 100 occurrences in the United States in the Decennial Census survey. The most recent statistics we have for the Viramontes surname is from the 2010 census data.

Popularity of Viramontes in America

Viramontes is the 6172nd most popular name in America based on the data we have collected from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Viramontes surname appeared 5,544 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 2 people would have the surname Viramontes.

We can also compare 2010 data for Viramontes to data from the previous census in 2000. The table below contains all of the statistics for both years in a side-by-side comparison.

2010 2000 Change (%)
Rank 6172 7157 -14.78%
Count 5,544 4,302 25.23%
Proportion per 100k 1.88 1.59 16.71%

The history of the last name Viramontes

The surname Viramontes is of Spanish origin and can be traced back to the regions of Castile and Aragon in Spain during the medieval period. The name likely derives from the Spanish words "virar," meaning to turn or veer, and "montes," meaning mountains or hills. This suggests that the name may have originally referred to someone who lived near or worked on a winding mountain path or road.

One of the earliest recorded instances of the name Viramontes appears in the Becerro de las Behetrías, a medieval census document from the 14th century that listed landowners and their properties in the regions of Castile and León. The name is also found in various historical documents from the 15th and 16th centuries, such as land records and municipal archives in towns across northern Spain.

The earliest known bearer of the surname Viramontes was Rodrigo Viramontes, a nobleman and military leader who fought in the Reconquista campaigns against the Moors in the 13th century. Another notable figure was Pedro Viramontes, a renowned architect and stonemason who worked on several churches and cathedrals in Castile during the late 15th century.

As the Spanish Empire expanded across the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Viramontes surname spread to various regions in the New World. One prominent individual was Juan de Viramontes, a conquistador and explorer who accompanied Hernán Cortés on his expeditions to Mexico in the early 1500s. In the 18th century, Ignacio Viramontes was a respected cartographer and mapmaker who created detailed maps of various territories in New Spain (present-day Mexico and Central America).

In the realm of literature, María Viramontes (born 1954) is a notable contemporary Chicana writer and author of works such as "Under the Feet of Jesus" and "Their Dogs Came with Them." Her novels and short stories explore themes of immigration, identity, and the experiences of Mexican-American communities.

Overall, the surname Viramontes has a long and rich history, with its origins rooted in the mountains and landscapes of medieval Spain and a subsequent journey that paralleled the expansion of the Spanish Empire across the Americas.

Race and ethnic origin of people with the last name Viramontes

We also have some data on the ancestry of people with the surname Viramontes.

The below race categories are the modified race categories used in the Census Bureau's population estimates program. All people were categorized into six mutually exclusive racial and Hispanic origin groups:

  1. White only
  2. Black only
  3. American Indian and Alaskan Native only
  4. Asian and Pacific Islander only
  5. Hispanic
  6. Two or More Races

For the most recent 2010 census data, the race/ethnic origin breakdown for Viramontes was:

Race/Ethnicity Percentage Total Occurrences
Non-Hispanic White Only 4.74% 263
Non-Hispanic Black Only 0.27% 15
Non-Hispanic Asian and Pacific Islander Only 0.13% 7
Non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaskan Native 0.14% 8
Non-Hispanic of Two or More Races 0.18% 10
Hispanic Origin 94.53% 5,241

Note: Any fields showing (S) means the data was suppressed for privacy so that the data does not in any way identify any specific individuals.

Since we have data from the previous census in 2000, we can also compare the values to see how the popularity of Viramontes has changed in the 10 years between the two census surveys.

2010 2000 Change (%)
White 4.74% 4.51% 4.97%
Black 0.27% (S)% (S)%
Asian and Pacific Islander 0.13% (S)% (S)%
American Indian and Alaskan Native 0.14% 0.14% 0.00%
Two or More Races 0.18% 0.46% -87.50%
Hispanic 94.53% 94.77% -0.25%

Data source

The last name data and ethnic breakdown of last names is sourced directly from the Decennial Census survey, conducted every 10 years by the United States Census Bureau.

The history and meaning of the name Viramontes was researched and written by our team of onomatology and genealogy experts.

If you have a correction or suggestion to improve the history of Viramontes, please contact us.

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"Viramontes last name popularity, history, and meaning". NameCensus.com. Accessed on July 27, 2024. http://namecensus.com/last-names/viramontes-surname-popularity/.

"Viramontes last name popularity, history, and meaning". NameCensus.com, http://namecensus.com/last-names/viramontes-surname-popularity/. Accessed 27 July, 2024

Viramontes last name popularity, history, and meaning. NameCensus.com. Retrieved from http://namecensus.com/last-names/viramontes-surname-popularity/.

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