Garcia, Gartzia or García is an Iberian surname common throughout Spain, Portugal, Andorra, the Americas, and the Philippines. It is a surname of patronymic origin; García was a very common first name in early medieval Iberia.
Alfonso Irigoyen believed it to derive from the Basque adjective garze(a) meaning "young", whose modern form is gaztea or gaztia.[2][3]Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Antonio Tovar suggested it may come from the Basque word (H)artz, meaning "(the) Bear".[2][4][5][6][7] A third etymology suggests it may derive from the Basque words "Gazte Hartz", meaning "(the) young bear".[citation needed] Variant forms of the name include Garcicea, Gartzi, Gartzia, Gartze, Garsea, and Gastea.[8] The original Basque form with an affricate sibilant (/ts/, Basque spelling tz) evolved in Spanish to the current form.
There are Gasconic cognates of Garcia like Gassie and Gassion[9] (Béarn, Gassio 14th century,[10] real name of Edith Piaf, born Edith Gassion).
Other theories suggest that García is of Germanic origin and may derive from wars meaning young warrior[11] or the Visigothic words garxa and garcha meaning graceful prince.[12]
Popularity
García is the most common surname in Spain (where 3.32% of the population is named García)[13] and also the second most common surname in Mexico.
In the 1990 United States Census, Garcia was the 18th most reported surname, accounting for 0.25% of the population.[14] It has become more common since then, jumping to eighth place in 2000.[15]
Garcia was quite rare before the First World War in France, except in the French Pays Basque,[16] but became the 14th most common surname in France (and the eighth for the number of births between 1966 and 1990) due to Spanish immigration.[17][18] It ranked second in the region Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur for the number of births 1966–1990.[19]
Geographical distribution
As of 2014, 33.2% of all known bearers of the surname García were residents of Mexico (frequency 1:35), 14.1% of Spain (1:31), 8.4% of the United States (1:402), 6.0% of Colombia (1:74), 4.6% of Venezuela (1:62), 4.4% of Brazil (1:435), 4.1% of the Philippines (1:230), 3.9% of Guatemala (1:39), 3.0% of Argentina (1:134), 2.8% of Cuba (1:38), 2.8% of Peru (1:105), 1.8% of Ecuador (1:83), 1.7% of Honduras (1:48), 1.5% of the Dominican Republic (1:64), 1.4% of Nicaragua (1:41), 1.2% of El Salvador (1:47) and 1.1% of France (1:576).
In Spain, the frequency of the surname was higher than average (1:31) in the following regions:
^"Nombres" (in Spanish). Euskaltzaindia (The Royal Academy of the Basque Language). Retrieved 2010-10-12.
^Albert Dauzat, Dictionnaire étymologique des noms et prénoms de France, réédition Larousse 1980, p. 280b
^DAUZAT 280b
^Elián, Juan Sebastián (2001). El gran libro de los apellidos y la heráldica. ISBN 9788479275495.
^Piferrer, Francisco (1858). "Nobiliario de los reinos y señoríos de España ...: Ilustrado con un diccionario de heráldica, adornado con más de dos mil escudos de armas".
^INE (Spain's Statistics National Institute)
^United States Census Bureau (9 May 1995). s:1990 Census Name Files dist.all.last (1-100). Retrieved on 2008-07-04.
^"Frequently Occurring Surnames From Census 2000". census.gov. August 27, 2008. Archived from the original on November 19, 2007. Retrieved 2009-03-21.
^Garcia in France before WWI
^Garcia : births (naiss.) in France from 1966 to 1990
^List of the most common surnames in France
^"LES NOMS DE FAMILLE LES PLUS PORTES EN FRANCE DANS LA REGION de PROVENCE-ALPES-COTES d'AZUR entre 1966 et 1990".
^Garcia surname distribution
Surname list
This page lists people with the surnameGarcía. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.