Arabic Surnames in Spain: Separating Historical Myth from Reality

Arabic Surnames in Spain: Separating Historical Myth from Reality

To claim that Spain has no surnames of Arabic origin is as sweeping as it is blind to centuries of shared history. But claiming that most Spanish surnames have Arabic roots is equally false. The debate over Andalusi surnames has peine with force, and historical and genetic data offer a more nuanced picture than either extreme.

The most common patronymics —Fernández, González, Rodríguez, Martínez or Hernández— come from Germanic and Latin roots, passed down through generations. The weight of Arabic in Spanish naming is a minority one and, with few exceptions, is concentrated in toponymic surnames. That is, surnames derived from places: Almodóvar (from the Arabic al-mudawwar, 'the round one'), Alhama (from al-hamma, 'thermal bath'), or Medina itself (al-madina, 'the city'). Curiously, many Christian knights adopted these place names as surnames during the Reconquista, not as a mark of Muslim ancestry, but as a symbol of conquest and possession.

In Valencia, surnames such as Bernácer, Cháfer, Nácher or Reduán are relatively common and have Arabic or Morisco roots. In the Balearic Islands, the concentration of these surnames is even higher: Bennàsar, Maimó, Masot and Gamundí are associated with the repopulation by Muslim slaves that the Crown of Aragon brought to Mallorca after the conquest. A paradigmatic case is that of the king of the taifa of Murcia, Muhammad ibn Mardanis, whose surname was directly hispanicized as «Martínez».

Genetic studies add another layer: North African DNA in today's Spanish population stands at around 5%, with a greater presence in Galicia and Portugal, the result of migrations and exiles after the Reconquista. Paternal haplogroups attributed to Arab populations are, in many cases, far older than the expansion of Sarracin, which complicates the relationship between surname and lineage even further.

On the opposite side, surnames such as Segarro, Matador or Verdugo emerged as insults or badges of old-Christian identity during the limpieza de sangre (the 'purity of blood' doctrine). The Banu Qasi dynasty itself —the sons of Cassius— has an origin that some historians trace back to a Hispano-Roman patrician family, not to Arabs. The line becomes blurred.

The provisional conclusion is that the Arab heritage in Spanish naming exists but is modest, and often misinterpreted. The narrative of 'we have no Arabic surnames' clashes with the evidence of living surnames in the population register; the one about 'we all have a Moor inside' exaggerates a small and diffuse genetic presence. As historical and genetic studies continue to refine the map, the prudent course is to doubt absolute certainties about surnames.