Lagos
A surname most often linked to the Spanish and Portuguese word for a lake or lagoon, or to the place name Lagos.
The #9,924 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 94,882 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Lagos is most naturally explained from Iberian place-naming, ultimately connected with words for a lake or lagoon. In Spanish and Portuguese, lagos means “lakes,” and the surname may have been taken from a place called Lagos or from a topographic reference to watery ground. Because the same form can also arise as a habitational name from several different places, it is a surname with more than one possible geographic source.
History
The name is common as a place name in the Iberian world, especially in Portugal, which makes locational origin the likeliest explanation for many bearers. Spanish and Portuguese surnames of this type often spread through migration to the Americas and other parts of the world. The 19th-century sources provided here do not give a direct surname etymology, but they support the ordinary Iberian meaning of the word as a body of water or hollow filled with water.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The name Lagos is also famous as a major city in Nigeria, though the surname usually has Iberian rather than African origin.
From the historical record
“a ser odiosos, como los tiranos o sofistas. Lagos. Concavidades grandes i profundas que están siem- pre llenas de agua. Laguna. Concavidad en la tierra donde se juntan i man- tienen muchas aguas. En los escritos es el hueco que se quedó sin escribir, o cuya escritura consumió el tiempo,”
— Diccionario de los apellidosNotable people named Lagos
- Ricardo Lagos (b. 1938)
Sourced from Wikidata; linked to their Wikipedia page.