Description
Every name is a story. This one begins with a question: Whose son are you?
“Martinez” means “son of Martín” — and it was invented not once but hundreds of times, by hundreds of unrelated fathers named Martín. In Navarre, Castile, and Galicia, in the valleys of the Basque country and the plains of Andalusia, the same answer arose again and again: a polygenetic name with no single founding bloodline, now the sixth most common surname in Spain, the tenth in the United States, and carried by some eight million people worldwide.
This lavishly illustrated volume traces Martinez through eight chapters — the Martín who lent his name and the saint who spread it; the heartland of northern Spain and the families who proved their nobility there; the crossings that carried the name to the New World, from Domingo Martínez de Irala’s Paraguay to the Californios; the signature story of Joe P. Martinez, the boy from Taos who gave his life on Attu and received the Medal of Honor; the heraldry that belongs to particular lineages and never to all; a gallery of great bearers — the Spanish statesman, the New Mexico governor, two Medal of Honor heroes, the scientist who helped crack CRISPR, the novelist, the musicians from Narciso to Bad Bunny, and the baseball immortals Pedro and Edgar; the curiosities, from the Martinez cocktail to the spellings it wears like travel stamps; the towns that kept the name; and where the Martinezes live today — eight million strong.
Printed in dramatic 8.5″ × 11″ large format, Martinez: A Surname History is the perfect gift for anyone who bears the name — past, present, and future — and for all those who love them.
Find your name. Find your story.
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