Mendoza is a
Basque surname, also occurring as a place name.
The name Mendoza means "cold mountain", derived from the
Basque words mendi (
mountain) and (h)otz (cold) + definite article '-a' (Mendoza being mendi+(h)otza). The original Basque form with an affricate sibilant (/ts/, Basque spelling /tz/) evolved in Spanish to the current form.
History
Records of the Mendoza family can be traced back to the Middle Ages in
Alava, in the Basque Country, Spain. It is believed that the family descends from the ancient Lords of
Llodio (Alava), where the original patronymic house would have been. The Mendozas belonged to the local nobility, and branched out into different family lines early on.
The most distinguished branch of the family originated in what nowadays is known as the village of
Mendoza, near
Vitoria-Gasteiz,
Basque Country; the village takes its name after the family. A certain scion of this family, Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, distinguished himself in the
Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1218), where he probably served under the Navarrese banner. He was responsible for building the ancestral home of the family, the
Tower of Mendoza, which still stands. This branch of the family entered the service of the
Kingdom of Castile during the reign of
Alfonso XI (1312–1350), and took active part in the
Reconquista, where they quickly acquired extensive land holdings in Castile and southern Spain through military and political service. The members of the
House of Mendoza intermarried extensively with the Castilian nobility, and the family has many descendants nowadays, with numerous nobility titles attached to it. The line of the
Dukes of the Infantado formed one of the main branches of the family.
Another branch of the family was based in
Laudio, 50km northwest from Vitoria-Gasteiz. The family got involved in the medieval bloody
War of the Clans. Finally, in
Erandio, a baserri exists under the same name. Its original name "mendotza" developed to "mendontze" in the 1890s, "mendoche" in the 1920s, "mendotxe" in the 1980s to the restored original of "mendotza" being the current.[1] The surname spread quickly through Castile during the Middle Ages. With the
discovery of America, many of its members would emigrate to the Americas, where the surname is common.
This page lists people with the
surnameMendoza. 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
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