About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 35. Chapters: Goya, Basque surnames, Garcia, Astete, Esquivel, Salazar, Aguirre, Mendoza, Ochoa, Archuleta, Loyola, Velasco, Cainzos, Bolivar, Zuniga, Urrutia, Buenechea, Montoya, Carrera, Larrain, Barrios, Ayala, Mujica, Garmendia, Arismendi, Ibarra, Caro, Bengoechea, Uribe, Etxeberria, Vizcarra, Alsogaray, Orozco, Zelaya, Allende, Ugarte, Camus, Vergara, Zavaleta, Araya, Etcheverry, Xavier, Arana, Solano, Echenique, Gorostiaga, Cano, Legaspi, Zabala, Elizondo, Echevarria, Urbina, Vizcaino, Esparza, Azcarraga, Alberdi, Arriaga, Onate, Goicoechea, Carranza, Ugalde, Echeverria, Landa, Elizalde, Ursua, Mendieta, Eyzaguirre, Arrieta, Armendariz, Zaldivar, Alurralde, Araoz, Palacio, Garai, Urquiza, Azcarate, Murua, Ybarra, Saldivar, Azua, Goyeneche, Amezaga, Duhalde, Elissalde, Agirre, Kortajarena. Excerpt: Basque surnames on the whole are easily identifiable, reasonably well documented and follow a small number of set patterns. The vast majority of all Basque surnames are not patronymic (like Johnson in English), or based on personal features (like Brown or Smith) but refer to the family's etxea, the historically all important family home. When a farm (baserri) was rented to another family, often the new tenants were known locally by the farm name rather than by their officially registered surname. The earliest documented Basque surnames occur on Aquitanian inscriptions from the time of the Roman conquest of Hispania and Gallia Aquitania. For the most part these can be easily identified with modern or medieval Basque surnames, for example ENNECONIS (the personal name Eneko plus the Latin genitive ending -IS) > Enekoitz. Garcia, one of the most frequent Spanish surnames, was originally a Basque first name stemming from Basque "gartzia," 'the young'. Mediaeval Basque names follow this descriptive naming pattern about the person, po...
