Fernando Mendoza's Real Name: Fernando Gabriel Mendoza V

Quick answer: Fernando Mendoza's real name is Fernando Gabriel Mendoza V. He was born on October 1, 2003.

Real name and early life

Fernando Mendoza is an American football quarterback, not a soccer player. Reference listings, including Wikipedia and Wikidata, give his full name as Fernando Gabriel Mendoza V, the fifth in his family to carry the name. Team and league bios use the short form, Fernando Mendoza.

Sources differ on where he was born. Pro-Football-Reference and Sporting News say he was born in Boston, where his family lived during his father's medical residency, and that they returned to Miami shortly afterward. ESPN's player bio lists his birthplace as Miami. Either way, he grew up in Miami, a mile from the University of Miami, and played high school football at Christopher Columbus High School. NFL.com describes him as Cuban-American.

Quick facts

• Real name: Fernando Gabriel Mendoza V
• Known as: Fernando Mendoza
• Born: October 1, 2003
• Known for: American football quarterback
• Sources checked: NFL.com, Las Vegas Raiders, ESPN, Sporting News

Career highlights

Mendoza spent three seasons at California (Cal) before transferring to Indiana for 2025. In that one Indiana season he led the Hoosiers to a 16–0 record and the College Football Playoff national championship, beating Miami 27–21 in the final. He led the FBS with 41 touchdown passes and threw for 3,535 yards.

He became the first Indiana player to win the Heisman Trophy, and also won the Maxwell, Walter Camp, and Davey O'Brien awards. On April 23, 2026, the Las Vegas Raiders selected him first overall in the 2026 NFL Draft. NFL.com notes that he joined Joe Burrow and Cam Newton as the only players in the common draft era to win the Heisman and the national title and then go No. 1 overall.

Name notes

Fernando Mendoza is his real name. The full form with Gabriel and the "V" suffix shows up in reference listings rather than in team bios. Fan sites often copy names from one another, so we checked this page against NFL.com and Las Vegas Raiders. Where sources disagree, we say so rather than guess. We also leave out middle names, nicknames, and origin stories that we couldn't confirm in a reliable source. A popular claim isn't enough to earn a place on this page if no encyclopedia, official record, or major news outlet backs it up.