Basque Onomastics of the Eighth to Sixteenth Centuries
Appendix 3: Cognomens

Gorrochategui (748) refers to all surnames that are neither locative nor patronymic as "cognomens," and so that term is used here to cover those names as well. The cognomens are grouped by the classifications that Gorrochategui suggests in "Basque Names": Parts of the Body, Physical Features, Moral Qualities, Jobs, Names of Animals, and Others. (I have provided full names below; and the date and source of the record are also provided.)

As stated in the Abstract and some of the earlier Appendices, the suffix -a indicates the use of the definite article (or "the"). In some cases, a cognomen may actually be an asyndetic (that is, unmarked) patronym from a given name that can be found in Appendix 1.

Notice that compound cognomens -- those derived from a combination of two different words -- are, in various places, written as either one word or two. In some cases, the cognomen is recorded after the word dicto or dicho, meaning "called" or "known as"; I believe that in daily usage, this would have been used as the person's surname, rather than the locative or patronym by which the person might also be identified in the more formal context of the records from which these names were taken.

  1. Parts of the Body

  2. Physical Features

  3. Moral Qualities

  4. Jobs

  5. Names of Animals

  6. Others