Bautista surname meaning

Bautista is a Spanish surname taken from the personal name Bautista, “Baptist,” the distinguishing epithet of Saint John the Baptist. It could begin as a family name inherited from an ancestor called Bautista, or as a baptismal or devotional name that later became hereditary. Bautista, Baptista, and Baptiste reflect Spanish, Portuguese, and French forms of the same Christian naming tradition, though they are not interchangeable in every record. The surname therefore points to a personal-name ancestor rather than to a trade or a place. Parent’s name is the catalog type, with high confidence in the documented name source.