Mejía (surname)

The surname may have originated as a toponym for the town of Muxia in Galicia, an autonomous community in north-western Spain.[3][4] Another idea is that the word "Mexia" used to mean "medicine" in an old variant of Spanish, and that this is where the surname came from.

One common belief is that the name may have Sephardic origins, from when the Spanish Kingdom forced Jewish settlers to change their surname to Castillian. The translation of the surname for "Messiah" would then become the name "Mesía".[5] However, the Spanish people who travelled to the Spanish colonies in South America were not allowed to be Jewish or to have any Jewish or Muslim ancestors, and thus this explanation may not account for the popularity of the surname in modern-day Latin America.

Note that Mexía is the older Spanish spelling of the name. In the modern orthography of Spain, the spelling is Mejía, though in Mexico the older orthography is still considered correct. (Similarly, until recently Spaniards rendered the country name Méjico rather than México, though this has reversed in recent decades out of deference to Mexico).

As of 2014, 23.7% of all known bearers of the surname Mejía were residents of Mexico (frequency 1:450), 16.2% of Colombia (1:253), 14.4% of Honduras (1:53), 8.0% of Guatemala (1:172), 6.5% of the Dominican Republic (1:138), 6.3% of the United States (1:4,915), 6.3% of El Salvador (1:86), 4.7% of Peru (1:583), 2.9% of Ecuador (1:475), 2.8% of Nicaragua (1:185), 2.5% of the Philippines (1:3,461), 2.0% of Venezuela (1:1,266) and 1.8% of Bolivia (1:510).

In Spain, the frequency of the surname was higher than national average (1:5,678) in the following autonomous communities:

• 1. Community of Madrid (1:2,644)
• 2. Castilla–La Mancha (1:3,787)
• 3. Catalonia (1:4,083)
• 4. Navarre (1:5,176)
• 5. Balearic Islands (1:5,189)
• 6. La Rioja (1:5,296)

In Honduras, the frequency of the surname was higher than national average (1:53) in the following departments:[6]

• 1. Ocotepeque Department (1:19)
• 2. Copán Department (1:31)
• 3. La Paz Department (1:32)
• 4. Santa Bárbara Department (1:40)
• 5. Comayagua Department (1:40)
• 6. Cortés Department (1:43)
• 7. Lempira Department (1:44)
• 8. Colón Department (1:49)
• 9. Atlántida Department (1:50)
• 10. Yoro Department (1:52)

The surname is a popular last name in Colombia, especially its Paisa region. According to the book "Genealogies of Antioquia and Caldas" by Gabriel Arango Mejía, the first Spaniard to bring the name to Colombia was a man named Don Juan Mejía de Tobar Montoya.[7]