These are the most common Mexican last names beginning with Q, ranked by how many people in Mexico have the name today.
Unlike most other letters where we have 70-80 names, here we just have nine. The reason is simple: the letter is rare in Spanish.
Most of these names are indigenous Maya. None of them have enough bearers in the United States to appear in the U.S. census statistics with a ranking.
These rankings come from a database of over 1.25 million workers published by Mexico’s Ministry of Public Education.
A Short List of Names
| Last Name | Mexico Rank | U.S. Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Kanagusico | 6,099 | |
| Kantun | 904 | |
| Kauil | 1,999 | |
| Kinil | 5,158 | |
| Komukai | 5,158 | |
| Koyoc | 1,485 | |
| Kuman | 6,775 | |
| Kumul | 2,266 | |
| Kuyoc | 3,163 |
Maya Names Starting With K
Kantun is the only name beginning with K within the top one thousand surnames in Mexico. This Maya name comes from the words kan for yellow and tun for stone. You may be thinking of gold, but taak’in is the more direct translation there.
Koyoc is the next most popular name, with Kuyok being the less prevalent variant. These are Yucatán names. In Yucatec Maya, koyok translates as “coyote”.
Kauil is just inside the top two thousand names. This is considered a variant of K’awiil, who was the Maya deity of lightning and royalty.
The image on the left in the picture below is a Mayan idol representing K’awiil.
Kumul is a Maya name. Some scholars say the meaning comes from the word k’umul, which refers to a gourd.
Kinil comes from the Maya word k’in for sun and il for “of”. The meaning is “a person of the sun”.
Non-Maya Mexican Names Starting With K
Komukai and Kanagusico are the exceptions here as they are not Mayan. They both have Japanese origins.
Kanagusico is the Mexican version of the Japanese name Kaneshiro. The meaning translates as “golden castle”. It seems that bearers in Mexico descend from an Okinawan immigrant family.
Komukai is also a Japanese name. Some scholars say it comes from the words ko “small” and mukai for “facing toward”. So, the phrase could refer to a place that faces toward a small landmark, such as a hill. But there isn’t agreement on this interpretation.
Notes About The List
The data comes from an open database of 1,256,438 federal education workers published by Mexico’s Secretaría de Educación Pública. The processed data is published on GitHub as mexican-names.
People in Mexico carry two surnames, the father’s followed by the mother’s. Our ranking uses the father’s surname, which is the one a person is normally known by.
Related lists
For surnames common among Hispanic Americans, see our list of Hispanic last names starting with K.
You can also use our surname ranking tool to check how a name ranked in the 2000 and 2010 U.S. censuses.
