Description
Every name is a story. This one begins with a question: Whose son are you?
“López” means “son of Lope” — and Lope comes from the Latin lupus, the wolf. It was invented not once but thousands of times, by thousands of unrelated fathers named Lope, from the charters of medieval Castile and the north of Spain to the harbors that carried it across two oceans. A polygenetic name with no single founding bloodline, now the fifth surname of Spain, the fourth in Mexico, the twelfth in the United States, and carried by millions of people worldwide.
This lavishly illustrated sixteenth volume of The Surname Histories Series traces López through eight chapters: the Lope who lent his name and the wolf-lore that runs behind it; the heartland of northern Spain, from mountain valleys to port cities; the crossings that carried the name to the New World and the Philippines — including the explorer who named the Philippines and the governor who founded Spanish Manila; the signature story of Antonio López de Santa Anna, eleven times president of Mexico; the heraldry — five shields, not one — that belongs to particular lineages and never to all; a gallery of fifteen great bearers, from a Paraguayan marshal and a golf legend to a Bronx superstar, a realist painter, Filipino and Argentine heroes, three Mexican presidents, and the chronicler famous for a voyage he never took; the curiosities, from the accent that vanished in the counting to the street address that is also a memorial; the towns that kept the name; and where the Lópezes live today — told with official counts only, never laundered estimates.
Printed in dramatic 8.5″ × 11″ large format, López: A Surname History is the perfect gift for anyone who bears the name — past, present, and future — and for all those who love them.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.