Galicia
A surname taken from the name of the historic region of Galicia in northwestern Spain.
The #3,837 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 33,454 Americans shares it.
Etymology
This surname is a regional or ethnonymic name, referring to Galicia, the old kingdom and province in northwestern Spain. The place-name itself goes back to Latin Gallaecia, the land of the Gallaeci, an ancient people of the area. As a surname, it would originally have marked someone as coming from Galicia or descended from Galician stock.
History
Historical sources use forms like de Galicia and related spellings as by-names for people identified with that region. Such surnames often began as descriptive labels in medieval records and later became hereditary family names. The form Galicia is also associated in older English surname scholarship with a possible derivation for the surname Gales, but the clearest reading here is the direct regional name.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
The word Galicia ultimately comes from the ancient Gallaeci, the Roman name for the people of that region.
From the historical record
“griegos. Tambien se toma foro por el mismo tribu- nal de justicia, i antiguamente se tomaba por lo mismo que fuero. Foro. En Galicia i Asturia se llama así cierto contrato mui semejante a la enfiteusis, en cuya virtud el dueño del terreno cede el dominio útil de él a otro por una o mas jeneraciones mediante el pago…”
— Diccionario de los apellidos