Valles
A surname usually tied to the Spanish word for “valleys,” often marking someone who lived in or came from a valley area.
The #2,614 most common surname in the United States (2010 Census) — about 1 in every 22,410 Americans shares it.
Etymology
Valles is the plural form of Spanish valle, meaning “valley,” ultimately from Latin vallis. As a surname, it would most naturally begin as a locational or topographic name for someone from a place called Las Valles or from a landscape of valleys. In Spanish naming practice it can also overlap with place-name surnames from various valleys or settlements bearing that element.
History
The excerpts point to Valles as a common Spanish surname element, listed alongside many other valley-based surnames. In older European surname scholarship, similar forms were sometimes compared with French place-names and with other Wallis/Wallace-type names, but that is a separate line of derivation and not the best fit for Spanish Valles. The name is found in Spanish-language surname lists and has spread widely in Spain and the Hispanic world.
Origin
Regions
Variant spellings
Fun fact
Because it is simply the plural of valle, Valles can read like “the valleys” in modern Spanish.
From the historical record
“where it is asserted that "the name of Wallcs, Wallis, Waleys, Wallase, or Wal- lace, is specifically derived from Valles, now Vaux, situated near Erie or Taire, in the Beauvoisin, in France, the manor and castle of which belonged to Ralph de Yalles, about the period of the Norman Conquest. The name, however (it is…”
— Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom