Quiroga
A Spanish locational surname from a place-name, most famously linked to the town of Quiroga in Galicia.
The #5,824 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 52,004 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Quiroga is a habitational surname, meaning it originally identified someone who came from a place called Quiroga. The best-known source is the town and valley of Quiroga in Lugo, Galicia, whose name is generally treated as pre-Roman in origin. The exact older meaning of the place-name is uncertain, so the surname is best understood as “from Quiroga” rather than as a transparent everyday Spanish word.
History
The surname arose in northwestern Spain and spread through the Spanish-speaking world with migration, especially to the Americas. It is well established in Galicia and later appears in colonial and modern records across Latin America and the United States. Because it is tied to a specific place-name, different unrelated families may have adopted it independently from that locality.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Quiroga is also a toponymic surname carried by notable figures such as the Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares’s wife, writer Silvina Ocampo, whose family had Quiroga connections through Spanish lineage; the name is especially recognizable in Hispanic genealogy because it points straight back to a specific Galician homeland.