Quiñonez
A Hispanic surname most likely formed from the Spanish personal name Quinón or a related place-based family name, later extended with the patronymic suffix -ez.
The #3,111 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 26,671 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Quiñonez is a Spanish surname, and the most likely explanation is that it is connected to the old personal name Quinón or a place name based on quinón, with the ending -ez added in the Spanish patronymic style. The suffix -ez usually means "son of" or "descendant of," though in some surnames it became a hereditary family marker rather than a literal patronymic. The base element is less certain than the ending, so the name is best treated as a Spanish family name of partly uncertain origin.
History
The surname is found in Spain and throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America, especially in communities with strong Iberian surname traditions. In modern records it often appears without the tilde as Quinonez, since U.S. documents and digital systems frequently drop diacritics. Like many Spanish surnames ending in -ez, it likely became fixed as a hereditary surname in the Middle Ages.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Because many U.S. databases omit accents, the same family may appear as both Quiñonez and Quinonez in different records.