Salgado
A Spanish and Portuguese surname meaning “salty” or “salty place,” often linked to salt flats, saline ground, or a descriptive nickname.
The #759 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 6,790 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Salgado comes from Spanish and Portuguese salgado, meaning “salted,” “salty,” or “brackish.” As a surname, it was likely applied either to someone who lived near salty or saline land, or to a person with a descriptive nickname based on the same idea. The word ultimately goes back to Latin sal, “salt.”
History
The surname is found in both Spain and Portugal and also spread widely to Latin America through Iberian migration. In surname lists it appears alongside other toponymic and descriptive forms tied to landscape features, which fits a common Iberian naming pattern. It remains fairly common in Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking communities today.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
In Iberian surname traditions, words for plants, terrain, and soil conditions often became hereditary family names, and Salgado fits that pattern neatly.
From the historical record
“pobeda , p)omar, pmneda , rabanal , rebollar, rebo- lledo, retamar, retamosa , robledo, robredo, rome- ral, salcedo, salgado, salinas, sanguineto, sobra- do ^ , tejada, tejeda , teijeiro, tobar, viñas , iizal ^. * Lahiniesta ó retama es también apellido en sus formas de ginesta j gesta; de ellas vienen destosa…”
— Ensayo histórico etimológico filológico sobre los apellidos castellanos