From Where Does The Surname Originate? ^{meaning and history}

User-submitted Reference

Montoya is an ancient surname from the Alava district in northern Spain, between the province of Burgos, the Basque Country, La Rioja and Navarre. According to (3) it means "a place of pastures among reed beds" and an now extinct village carried this name next to the town of Berantevilla, where a family of this name originated, and from which, according to Mobrobejo (4) all proceed Montoya proceed. They first expanded in the region (Treviño County, S. Maria de Tobera, Miranda de Ebro, Ereña, Caicedo Sopeña and Saiaz-Getaria) and then as a majority of Iberian surnames it expanded further south following the advance of the Reconquista.

By the end of the XVIII century many branches were firmly established in mainly in central and southern Spain, and in America and the Philippines. These families could be either directly descended from Spanish ascendants or having at some point adopted this surname through marriages or baptism.

The habit of children taking the surname of their fathers (girls loosing it to take their husband's surname) is not traditionally Iberian. Grown-up children or their parents at birth would choose among at least the four surnames (mother's line or father's line indifferently) according to interest (individual admired qualities, expected inheritance, prestige, affinities etc). Only with the normative influence of the French Revolution and Napoleon's Code would this custom gradually change and the order become fixed: name and two surnames in Spanish speaking countries like so Name + Father's surname + Mother's surname, and name and four surnames in Portuguese speaking countries like this Name + Mother's Mother's surname + Mother's Father's surname + Father's Mother's surname + Father's Father surname. The simple way of giving your name is to give your first and last in the latter case, but the first and middle one (Father's surname) in the first case.

People who would have adopted or been given Spanish surnames would have been Jews and Moors, then Gypsies, and after the expansion overseas American Indians or Natives of the Philippines. Catholic Christianity as well as the Iberian monarchy's Indian Laws tended to be inclusive and recognized a status in society through baptism and by taking a surname (in many cases, the conqueror's or the encomendero's, acting as godfather).

For example, a late XVIII century Spanish survey of gypsy families shows that at the time the Montoya surname was already a favourite one among the gypsy people, which testifies to the popularity of the surname. Gypsies had not been conquered or assigned to encomenderos, they wandered through Europe until some reached Spain were they retained their traditional nomadic lifestyle or settled down permanently where they wanted and were allowed to, while gradually adapting to the society around them. In this process they acquired a surname through baptism or mixed marriages. They usually favoured the prevalent and most prestigious ones in the communities where they were being integrated. Nowadays, the Montoya surname is perceived in many regions as an ethnic identity element.

This short sketch wouldn't be complete without some famous Montoyas, so here it goes, most of the information being drawn from the corresponding Wikipedia articles:

Rui Díaz de Montoya and Álvaro de Montoya

were at the Navas de Tolosa battle against the moors in 1212. The one where the Caliph had his tent were surrounded with a bodyguard of slave-warriors who were chained together as a defense. It was the decisive Christian victory that sealed the fate of the muslim domination in Spain which would come to an end at the fall of Granada in 1492.

Diego de Montoya was one of the eleven Knights who conquered the alcázar of the city of Baeza, in Andalusia, in 1227.

Juan de Montoya was a Captain at the conquest of Granada in 1492 where he settled on the land he had been granted by Fernando and Isabella.

Dr. Gaspar de Montoya was a distinguished member of the Counsel of Castile under Queen Joan The Mad and later of her son Emperor Charles V.

Fr. Luis de Montoya

b. 1497 d. 1569, Luis was a reformer of the Augustinian order in Portugal, friend of the Jesuits and confessor of King Sebastian (until this king went to Africa and disappeared at the battle of Alcácer Quibir, the 11 Augustinian friars who had accompanied the expedition remained there and tried to make some conversions among the Moors).

Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, born in Lima, Perú on 13 June 1585 and died there on 11 April 1652, was a Jesuit priest and missionary in the Paraguay Reductions. He is said to have personally baptized 100'000 Indians. As head of the missions, he had charge from 1620 of the Indian Reductions on the upper and middle course of the Paraná River, on the Uruguay River, and the Tape River. He added 13 further Reductions to the 26 already existing.

When the missions of Guayra were endangered by the incursions of bandeirantes from São Paulo, Brazil, who had been scouting inland along the Tietê River in search of slaves Father Montoya resolved to move the Christian Indians, about 15'000 in number, to the reductions in Paraguay, by water and by land. The plan was successfully carried out in 1631. "This expedition", says von Ihering, "is one of the most extraordinary undertakings of this kind known in history" [Globus, LX (1891), 179]. In 1637, Antonio went to Spain to lay a complaint before King Philip IV of Spain against the Portuguese kidnapping expedition policy. He obtained from the king important privileges and protective measures for the reductions of Paraguay.

He died soon after his return to Lima. He was also a great scholar and produced works on the Guaraní language that are still regarded as the best source for the study of the Guaraní language today.

Juan Martínez de Montoya was granted in 1606 an encomienda among the Jémez Indians in New Mexico and is the first Spaniard to be attacked by the Navajos Apaches Indians who stole some of his cattle and horse and which he had to fight back that year and again in 1607.

Carlos Montoya

Carlos García Montoya (1903-1993) was born in Madrid, Spain, and was a prominent flamenco guitarist and a founder of the modern-day popular flamenco style of music.

Sources

• http://heraldica.levante-emv.com/montoya/
• http://www.santurde.es/downloads/Apellido_Montoya.pdf
• http://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/montoya/374/
• http://www.bilbaoweb.com/vizcaya/bilbao/zabalburu/fdelcampo/mogrobejo/editorial.html
• http://www.revistadehumanidades.com/articulos/29-los-apellidos-de-los-gitanos-espanoles-en-los-censos-de-1783-85