Vasquez

Vázquez (also spelled Vásquez, Vasques), in non-Spanish-speaking countries often spelled as Vazquez or Vasquez, is an originally Galician surname, in use not only in Galicia but all over the Spanish-speaking world.

Overview[]

To a lesser extent it also occurs in Portuguese-speaking countries (spelled Vasques), where Vasco as surname is also used. Vasquez means "[son] of Vasco" and Vasco comes from the pre-Roman latinized name "Velascus"—a name of uncertain origin and meaning, but probably meaning Basque or Iberian. In Galician-Portuguese the pre-Roman name becomes Velascu > Veascu > Vaasco > Vasco.

It is known that in some Spanish-speaking countries, families of non-Iberian ancestry have also adopted this surname. In Colombia and Argentina, there have been instances of "Watzke" and "Watzka" families, of German-Czech descent, Hispanicizing their surnames to "Vasquez". The surname was chosen as being the one most closely resembling their former name; in Italy a similar phenomenon was noted with some "Watzke" changing to "Vasco".^[1]

There are also Spanish cognate surnames Velasco or Velázquez.^[2]

List of people with this surname[]

Fictional characters[]

• Vasquez, a supporting character from the film Aliens
• Alexandra "Alex" Vasquez, one of the three main characters of the animated television series Totally Spies!
• Esmeralda "Ezzy" Vasquez, a character from the video game Real Heroes: Firefighter

References[]

Surname list

This page lists people with the surname Vasquez.
If an 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.