Catalan Name - Spain's Other Languages - Basque Names

Basque Names

See also: Basque language and Basque surnames

The territories under the influence of Basque culture, mainly the Basque Country and Navarre, usually follow Spanish naming customs. A bilingual Basque-Spanish speaker will not necessarily bear a Basque name, and a monolingual Spanish speaker can use a Basque name or a Basque hypocoristic of an official Spanish name.

Some Basque-language names and surnames are foreign transliterations into the Basque tongue, e.g. Ander (English: "Andrew"; Spanish: Andrés), Mikel (English: "Michael"; Spanish: Miguel), or Ane (English: "Anne"; Spanish: Ana). In some cases, the name's original-language denotation is translated to Basque, i.e. Zutoia and Zedarri denote the Spanish Pilar (English: "Pillar"). Moreover, some Basque names, such as Xabier and Eneko (English "Xavier" and "Inigo") have been transliterated into Spanish (Javier and Íñigo).

Recently, Basque names without a direct equivalent in other languages have become popular, e.g. Aitor (a legendary patriarch), Odei ("cloud"), Iker ("to investigate"), and Amaia ("the end"); finally, other Basque names, without a current direct Spanish meaning, are unique to the Basque language: Eneko, Garikoitz, Urtzi. Basque names, rather than Spanish names, are preponderant in the Basque Country, countering the Spanish-name imposition of the Franco régime requiring only Spanish names; after Franco's death and the democratic restoration, many Basque adults changed their Spanish names to the Basque equivalent, e.g. from Miguel to Mikel.

A source for modern Basque names is Sabino Arana's Deun-Ixendegi Euzkotarra ("Basque saint-name collection", published in 1910). Instead of the traditional adaptations of Romance names, he proposed others he made up and that in his opinion were truer to the originals and adapted to the Basque phonology. For example, his brother Luis became Koldobika, from Frankish Hlodwig. The traditional Peru (from Spanish "Pedro"), Pello or Piarres (from French "Pierre"), all meaning "Peter", became Kepa from Aramaic כיפא (Kepha). He believed that the suffix -e was inherently feminine, and new names like Nekane ("pain"+ne,"Dolores") or Garbine ("clean"+ne, "Immaculate ") are frequent among Basque females.

Basque surnames usually denoted the patronymic house of the bearer; e.g. Etxebarria —"new house", from etxe (house) + barri (new), denotes "related to a so-named farmhouse"; in the same way, Garaikoetxea — "house in the heights", garai ("height") + etxe ("house"). Sometimes, surnames denoted not the house itself but a characteristic of the place, e.g. Saratxaga — "willow-place", from saratze ("willow") + -aga ("place of"); Loyola, from loi ("mud") + ola ("iron smithery"); Arriortua —"stone orchard", from harri ("stone") + ortua ("orchard"). Before the 20th century all Basquemen were considered nobles (indeed, some Basque surnames, e.g. Irujo, were related to some of the oldest Spanish noble families), and many of them used their status to emigrate with privileges to other regions of the Spanish Empire, especially the Americas, due to which some Basque surnames became common to the Spanish-American world; e.g. Mendoza — "cold mountain", from mendi ("mountain" + hotza ("cold"); Salazar — "Old hall", from sala ("hall") + zahar ("old"). Until 1978, Spanish was the single official language of the Spanish civil registries and Basque surnames had to be registered according to the Spanish phonetical rules (for example, the Spanish "ch" sound merges the Basque "ts", "tx", and "tz", and someone whose surname in Standard Basque would be "Krutxaga" would have to write it as "Cruchaga", letter "k" also not being used in Spanish). Although the democratic restoration ended this policy, allowing surnames to be officially changed into their Basque version, there still are many people who hold Spanish-written Basque surnames, even in the same family: a father born before 1978 would be surnamed "Echepare" and his children, "Etxepare". This policy even changed the usual pronunciation of some Basque surnames. For instance, in Basque, the letter "z" maintained a sibilant "s"-like sound, while Spanish changed it; thus, a surname such as "Zabala" should be properly read similar to "sabala", although in Spanish, because the "z" denotes a "th" sound, it would be read as "Tha-bala" . However, since the letter "z" exists in Spanish, the registries did not force the Zabalas to transliterate their surname.

In Biscay and Guipuzcoa, it was common to take a surname from the place (town or village) where one resided, unless one was a foundling. Basque compound surnames were created with two discrete surnames, e.g. Elorduizapaterietxe — Elordui + Zapaterietxe, a practice denoting family allegiances or the equal importance of both families. This custom sometimes conduced to incredibly long surnames, for compound surnames could be used to create others; for example, the longest surname recorded in Spain is Basque, Burionagonatotoricagageazcoechea", formed by Buriona+ Gonatar + Totorika + Beazcoetxea.

Finally, the nationalist leader Sabino Arana pioneered a naming custom of transposing the name-surname order to what he thought was the proper Basque language syntax order; e.g. the woman named Miren Zabala would be referred to as Zabalatar Miren— the surname first, plus the -tar suffix denoting "from a place", and then the name. Thus, Zabalatar Miren means "Miren, of the Zabala family". The change in the order is effected because in the Basque tongue, declined words (such as Zabalatar) that apply to a noun are uttered before the noun itself; another example of this would be his pen name, Arana ta Goiritar Sabin. This Basque naming custom was used in nationalist literature, not in formal, official documents wherein the Castilian naming convention is observed.