Pardo
A surname that can come from a nickname for a brownish or dark complexion, and in some older European sources is also linked to an ancient Germanic name-stem.
The #3,249 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 27,805 Americans shares it.
Etymology
In Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, pardo means "gray-brown," "dark," or "leopard-like," so the surname could easily have begun as a descriptive nickname for someone with a dusky complexion or coloring. Some older onomastic works also connect forms like Pardo and Pardou/Pardoux with a very old Germanic name-stem Pard- or Bard-, often seen in medieval personal names. Because the sources point in more than one direction, the surname may have separate origins in different families.
History
The name is common in Iberian and Romance-language settings, where it often belongs with surnames formed from color terms such as Rojo, Moreno, and Prieto. Historical writers also noted related forms in France, Germany, and the Low Countries, and some examples may reflect medieval personal names rather than a color nickname. In Spanish usage, Pardo is one of several old descriptive surnames that could later pass from a nickname into a hereditary family name.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Several early surname writers grouped Pardo with a whole family of color surnames, alongside names like Moreno, Prieto, and Colorado.
From the historical record
“Chaucer, Cant. Tales, A 3084. PARDOE "1 for the Cont. Pardo: 1 f. the PARDOWJ O.Teut. name-stem Pardr for, Bard- [v. under Bardrick], treq. a dim.'of a name vvith Pard- (Bard-) for its first element (such as Bardwulf); e.g. the French saint-name Pardoux appeared in”
— Surnames of the United Kingdom: a concise etymological dictionary (2 vols in 1)