Parra

Parra (Hebrew: גפן) is a Spanish, Portuguese, and also Jewish surname, meaning grapevine or trellis,[1] for example, a pergola. It is taken from the word meaning latticework and the vines raised on it. In Hebrew context the surname is used for Jewish people whose ancestors were wine makers as "Parra" (גפן "Geffen") is the Hebrew word in Spanish for vitis.[2][3]

This article is about the name. For other uses, see Parra (disambiguation).

Etymology and history

Among Sephardi Jews, the surname is a toponymic from the town of La Parra, Badajoz in Spain, where there was a large Jewish community[4] before their expulsion from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon by the Alhambra Decree in 1492.[5][6] Many descendants with the surname,[7] some of them converso,[8] went into exile in Portugal and the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam. In Spain, numerous conversions took place, which is why the surname appears on the lists of the Catholic Church and the Inquisition. It is believed that the origin of the surname lies in the symbolism of the vine and the grapevine, which for the Jewish people means the People of Israel that grows and multiplies. Thus the fields of vines were called "fields of roses" because Israel was the "mystical rose".[9]

At the beginning of the 19th century in the city of Buda, in Hungary, more than half a thousand Sephardic Jews were listed with the surname Parra.

People with the surname

De la Parra

References
  1. "Parrilla Surname, Family Crest & Coat of Arms, House of Names
  2. "Diccionario de le lengua Española". Real Academia Española.
  3. "parra". Word Reference.
  4. Álvarez, Ana María López, and Ricardo Izquierdo Benito. (2003). Juderías y sinagogas de la Sefarad medieval. Vol. 73. University of Castilla La Mancha. p. 5.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. Melammed, Renée Levine (April 1995). "Jane S. Gerber. The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience. New York: Free Press, 1992. xxv, 333 pp". AJS Review. 20 (1): 219–222. doi:10.1017/s0364009400006577. ISSN 0364-0094.
  6. Graizbord, David (2007). "Joseph Pérez. History of a Tragedy: The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Intro. by Helen Nader. Trans. Lysa Hochroth. Hispanisms 6. Champaign : University of Illinois Press, 2007. xvi + 150 pp. index. append. $35. ISBN: 978-0-252-03141-0". Renaissance Quarterly. 60 (4): 1330–1332. doi:10.1353/ren.2007.0376. ISSN 0034-4338. S2CID 161337848.
  7. "About Us". www.delaparrafamily.com. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  8. "Miriam Bodian. Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam. (The Modern Jewish Experience.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1997. Pp. xiii, 219. $35.00". The American Historical Review. December 1998. doi:10.1086/ahr/103.5.1617. ISSN 1937-5239.
  9. "El origen de los apellidos Parra, Habif (Javid), Nahmias (Nahamías) y Espinosa | Radio Sefarad" (in Spanish). Retrieved 10 April 2020.
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