Soto surname meaning

Soto is a Spanish surname from the landscape word soto, commonly glossed as a grove, small woodland, or wooded lowland near water. Someone who lived by such a feature—or came from a settlement named Soto—could take the name. De Soto and Del Soto preserve the “from the grove” or “of the grove” construction found in Iberian surnames. The word describes geography, not a trade, and it does not point to one universal Soto family. Because the lexical and habitational explanations agree, Surname Means classifies Soto as a place surname with high confidence.