Baeza
A Spanish surname taken from the place-name Baeza, a historic city in Andalusia.
The #4,203 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 36,616 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Baeza is a locational surname from the Spanish city of Baeza in Jaén, Andalusia. The place-name goes back through Arabic and earlier Iberian forms, though older etymologies are not entirely settled in the 19th-century sources. As a surname, it originally identified someone who came from, lived near, or had some connection with that city.
History
The name is well known in Spain and in Spanish-speaking communities elsewhere, and it belongs to the large class of surnames formed from place-names. Historical references also connect Baeza with Andalusian nobility and with the Christian conquest of the city in the Middle Ages, which helped make the place-name familiar in heraldic and genealogical writing. In modern usage it remains especially common in Spain and Latin America.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Baeza is also the name of a UNESCO World Heritage historic town, paired with nearby Úbeda for its Renaissance architecture.
From the historical record
“tirpes adonde convenga , incluso hasta Adán , co- mo hizo el licenciado Diego Matute de Peñafiel, canónigo de Baeza, con las genealogías de Fe- lipe III y del Duque de Lerma. Don Quijote mostró conocer los procedimientos de estos in- dustriales, al confiar en «que podría ser que el sabio que escribiese mi historia…”
— Ensayo histórico etimológico filológico sobre los apellidos castellanos