Montanez
A Spanish-language surname meaning someone from the mountains, or from a place called Montaña/Montanez.
The #2,240 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 18,964 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Montanez is a Spanish surname built on montaña, meaning "mountain," with the surname ending -ez/-ez-like forms often used in Spanish names. In practice, it is commonly understood as a place-based name for someone who came from a mountainous area or from a locality named for mountains. In some cases, it may also reflect a regional or descriptive sense tied to uplands rather than a single precise place.
History
The name is found in Spanish-speaking communities and later spread widely through migration to the Americas and beyond. In modern use it is especially associated with Hispanic and Latino families in the United States and Latin America. Because spelling and accent marks varied in records, forms such as Montanez and Montañez may appear interchangeably.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The version without the tilde, Montanez, is common in English-language records because older typewriters, census forms, and databases often dropped diacritics.