- Basque surnames
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 but refer to the family's "etxea", the historically all important family home.History
The earliest documented Basque surnames occur on Aquitanian inscriptions from the time of the
Roman conquest of Hispania andGallia Aquitania . For the most part these can be easily identified with modern or medieval Basque surnames, for example "ENNECONIS" (the personal name "Eneko" plus theLatin genitive ending -IS) > Enekoitz.Orthography
During the medieval period Basque names were written broadly following the spelling conventions of the official languages of the day, usually Spanish and French.
The main differences lie in the way the relatively large number of Basque sibilants are spelled. These are especially hard to represent using French spelling conventions so on the whole, the French spelling of Basque words in general tends to be harder to reconcile with the modern spellings and the pronunciation. Also, vowel initial Basque surnames from the
Northern Basque Country acquired an initial d (French "de") in many cases.Since the introduction of Standard Basque and a common written standard, the number of non-indigenous spelling variants has begun to reduce, especially in Spain.
ee also
*
Surname map
*Patronymic
*Personal name
*Legal name References
*Etxegoien, J. "Orhipean: Gure Herria ezagutzen" Xamar: 1992, ISBN 84-7681-119-5
*Gorrotxategi, M. "Nomenclátor de apellidos vascos/Euskal deituren izendegia"Euskaltzaindia : 1998
*Michelena, L. "Apellidos vascos" (5th edition), Txertoa: 1997
*Trask, L. "The History of Basque" Routledge: 1997 ISBN 0-415-13116-2
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