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The genealogical expert, Iñigo Rementeria, shared his work with readers of EuskalKultura.com last year. His book  “Gure Abi Izenak” included a register of manor houses and farmhouses in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, and it's well known that many Basque last names come from farmhouse names.  Now, he has taken another step and has included a list of farmhouses in Araba that is also available to our readers.  Eskerrik asko, Iñigo!

Ereño, Bizkaia.  House names are the basis of research carried out by Iñigo Rementeria from Gernika.  This effort has resulted in the book, Gure Abi Izenak that gathers the names of manor houses and farmhouses where many Basque last names have originated.

The first edition of the work gathered data from farmhouses in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa; now, Rementeria has taken another step in his research arriving to Araba.  We doný know yes if he will continue with farhouses and last names from the rest of the Basque Country.  

Rementeria’s passion for genealogy began 25 years ago, when he was living in Ereño and started his own family tree.  His research took him to the Bizkaia Diocesan Archives in Derio, prior to the Internet, where he would spend his mornings and vacations for three years in a row.  During the process, and thanks to the book Manors of Bizkaia, by Jaime de Kerexeta, he realized that many last names come from the houses and realized the importance of these names especially if the last name were illegible or misspelled.

“For example, on a birth certificate in Forua, the last name was illegible; it could have been Tomelburu, Torrelburu, Tonelburu, who knows?  I consulted Kerexeta and there it was: the farmhouse of Tonelburu in Foru.  That is when I made the connection that the last name originated from the farmhouse,” he recalls.

Rementeria then began researching Basque house names, beginning first in Ereño, the small Bizkaian town where he lives, and followed by Bizkaia, and Gipuzkoa.  During the process, he was greatly aided by the digitization, in 2005, of the archives of the Diocese for Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Araba that are now published online (available on Dokuklik). Thanks to this advance, Rementeria gathered the data on Bizkaia little by little, and then that of Gipuzkoa and now he is in Araba.  This is good information for anyone researching their origin, and it is available online. 

You can consult his book here.

More information on Basque genealogy from the Basque-Navarran Genealogy Association Antzinako

Antzinako on Facebook, here.