Where the Contreras name comes from

Contreras is a Spanish surname taken from a place, the town of Contreras in Burgos, Spain. The town's name goes back to Latin contrariae, the feminine plural of contrarius, meaning "lying opposite" or "opposed". As a surname it marked someone from that place, and it is often glossed as "from the surrounding area". It became a common family name across the Spanish-speaking world.

Contreras also reached the Philippines, where it passed into both Tagalog and Cebuano, and the Tagalog form came in through the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos. It ranks as the 287th most common surname in the Philippines and is found mainly in Batangas, Bulacan and Quezon.