Cuenca
A Spanish surname taken from place names called Cuenca, most famously the city of Cuenca in central Spain.
The #9,611 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 91,318 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Cuenca is a Spanish place-name surname, originally indicating someone who came from a town or district called Cuenca. The place name is generally explained from Latin roots meaning a basin, hollow, or valley-like depression, which fits the geography of many sites so named. In older scholarship, the surname is also linked to medieval spellings of the city name, with occasional notes on historical forms such as Cuenga.
History
The surname is found in Spain and in Spanish-speaking communities abroad, especially where family names were carried to the Americas. The excerpts provided treat Cuenca as a place-based surname and note an older spelling tradition, but they do not give a detailed family history. As with many locational surnames, unrelated families may have adopted it independently from the same place-name.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Cuenca is both a surname and the name of a well-known Spanish city famous for its cliffside old town.
From the historical record
“el becerro viejo de la catedral de Toledo. La conversión de la c en cedilla no es rara ; de Co- yanca se hizo Coyanra ; Cuenca se dijo antigua- mente Cuenga, como sigue siendo en francés; Cubel, Quhel; Arriaza quieren algunos que haya sido Arriaca ; carruca ha hecho carroza , roncare,”
— Ensayo histórico etimológico filológico sobre los apellidos castellanos