So yesterday I was watching the Phillies-Rockies playoff game and saw the Phils’ Raul Ibañez, Carlos Ruiz, and Pedro Feliz face off against Rockies’ pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez, with Colorado’s Carlos Gonzalez patrolling left field, and I got to wondering…is it mere coincidence that so many Hispanic family names end in the letter “Z”? Or is there some etymological reason behind it?
I don’t have specific fact to give here, but I can make an educated guess that it corresponds with Welsh -s, English and Scandinavian -son, and Slavic -(v/w)icz abd -ov in being a ‘fossilized patronymic’. In support of this, I’ll point to the early Navarrese kings (from whom the first Leonese and Aragonese kings were descended, most of whom had names like Garcia Sanchez, whose father was Sancho Garcez. and who was his grandfather’s namesake. I’m not positive on this, but I believe it stands a good chance of being accurate.
Right. The -ez, -az, suffixes mean “son of”.
It is not completely exact, but both Polycarp and the Cap are more or less right about it.
These names you refer to come from a tradition on the Middle Ages on some regions of Spain (Castilla, León, Navarra and Aragón), where it was common to use the endings -ez, -z and -iz to indicate “son of”. So Manuel son of Pedro was called Manuel Perez. Many of the most common Spanish surname come from this tradition: Martínez, Perez, Fernandez, Lopez…
It seems that this comes not from Latin, but from the Basque languages before the Romans, so pretty old stuff. And also, there are some surnames that finish on -z that I guess are just coincidental. For example, that Pedro Feliz you mention… I would say that the Feliz there is not “son of Felix” (although it might be), but just means “Happy”… but this is a WAG, anyway.
BTW, source: Heraldaria - Heráldica y Genealogía Hispana
What others have said… The equivalent of “son (or daughter, I guess) of” is “-ez”.
Rodrigo = Rodríguez
Gonzalo = González
Pedro = Pérez
Martín = Martínez
Regarding Pedro => Perez, is dropping the d a standard rule in Spanish (I’m assuming that dropping the last vowel to replace it is universal), or did that come about after the ‘son of’ form was standardized?
Just confirming what’s already been said, there’s two different animals there.
Feliz is not like the rest. Feliz means “happy” and it’s just a coincidence AFAIK. The rest are patronimics.
Ibáñez is son of Ivan/Iban/Juan.
Ruiz is son of Ruy/Rodrigo.
Jiménez is son of Jimeno.
González is son of Gonzalo.
Martínez is son of Martín.
Díaz is son of Diego.
Pero is an old form of Pedro, hence the Pérez, plus Pédrez is just sort of impronunceable.
Both Garcés and García are patronimics meaning “son of García.”
Cortés means “courteous, polite;” spelling it with a -z is a typo dagnabit, as there is no such name as “Corto” whose son it would be (except in the Corto Maltese comics). Yeah, it’s a pet peeve of mine.