Heredia (etymology)

Heredia is place-name and surname stemming from the Latin name heredium. However, different evolution paths have been postulated for the word, even different origins.

According to Belgian economist Émile Louis Victor de Laveleye, the Heredium (singular) or Heredia (plural) was known as "land transmitted hereditarily". According to researcher Flavius Josephus, heredium was a name given to a costly citadel in memory of Herod's great actions, as Herod "adorned it with the most costly palaces, and erected very strong fortifications" (The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus, page 48).

In the Ancient Rome study, The Roman Garden: Space, Sense, and Society by Katharine T. Von Stackelberg, the heredium symbolized "the continuity between one generation of citizens and the next". Heredia is a plural of an Ancient Roman unit of measurement, whose singular form is Heredium, which is approximately equivalent to 1.246 acres or 5060 square meters. Therefore, as in many Roman words that end with -edia, (example: media, encyclopedia, logopedia, orthopedia, etc.), heredia is plural in significance. In Apellidos vascos, linguist Koldo Mitxelena postulates, likewise, a heredium root for the surname and village Heredia in the Basque Country, attested as Deredia for Basque language small place-names, due to prothesis, in the same way as Basque surname and place-name Gerediaga.[1]

According to Harvard University, Harvard's Archimedes Project, a scholarly research on the "history of mechanics and engineering from antiquity to the Renaissance" (Harvard), quotes etymological roots of Heredia from Latin as having various meanings including:

  • heredipeta: the next heir.
  • hereditamentum: hereditament, all property that may be inherited.
  • hereditare: to cause to inherit.
  • hereditas: an inheritance.

According to the History of Free Masonry, Volume 6, Heredia is a name derived from Herod the Great and his Herodian Kingdom.

References

  1. ↑ Michelena, Luis (1997). Apellidos vascos. Txertoa. pp. 98–99.
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