Where the Ortega name comes from

Ortega is a Spanish surname that grew out of Latin urtica, meaning "nettle". The noun ortega, a variant of Castilian ortiga, became a place name, and several villages in Spain carry it, including Ortega in Burgos, Jaen and A Coruna. A baptismal record of 2 March 1570 at Santa Maria Magdalena in Valladolid names Phelpa de Ortega, a de Ortega from the village of Ortega. A second theory traces the name instead to Ortun, earlier Fortun, from the Latin personal name Fortunius with an added suffix. The same nettle root gives Ortica in Italian, Urzica in Romanian and Ortie in French.

Early records also come from Carrion de los Condes in Palencia, and the name later spread through Castile, Andalusia and Murcia and on to Mexico and Latin America. In Aragon, two lines bearing the surname came out of Cinco Villas, one of them of infanzon rank, and each carried a variant of the other's coat of arms. The 2010 United States Census counted 127,256 people named Ortega, making it the 239th most common surname in the country.