Blanco
A Spanish surname meaning “white,” usually from a nickname for someone fair, pale, or gray-haired.
The #1,099 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 9,709 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Blanco comes from Spanish blanco, “white,” ultimately from Germanic *blankaz, a word for something bright, shining, or pale. As a surname, it most often began as a descriptive nickname for a person with fair skin, light hair, or a notably pale appearance. In some cases it may also have been used contrastively or ironically, as medieval nicknames often were.
History
The surname is well attested in medieval Iberian records, and the excerpts show examples in Spanish documents from the 900s. It remained common across Spain and later spread widely into the Spanish-speaking world. Because it is a transparent color surname, it also appears independently in families whose ancestors were simply identified as “the white” or “the fair one.”
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The same Germanic root behind Blanco also lies behind English words like “blank” and related European surnames meaning “white” or “bright.”
From the historical record
“pero, Zapatero, Herrero, Lavandero, Carnicero, Carpin- tero, Arnero, Tejedor: no pocos, del color. de. la, cara, del pelo O de los ojos, como Blanco, Negro, Ruhio, vI”
— Diccionario de los apellidosNotable people named Blanco
- Cuauhtémoc Blanco (b. 1973)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.