Cruz is a surname of Iberian origin, first found in Castile,[citation needed] Spain, but later spread throughout the territories of the former Spanish and Portuguese Empires. In Spanish and Portuguese, the word means "cross", either the Christian cross or the figure of transecting lines or ways. For example, in the Philippines, the adopted Tagalog word is rendered to "krus" in plain usage, but the Spanish spelling survives as a surname.
The word "Cruz" (Spanish for "Cross"), as well as "Vera Cruz" ("True Cross") and "Santa Cruz" ("Holy Cross") are used as surnames and toponyms. Its origin as a surname particularly flourished after the Alhambra Decree of 1492 and the increasing activities of the Spanish Inquisition, when New Christian families with Crypto-Jewish, Moorish, and/or mixed religious heritage converted to the state-enforced religion of Catholicism and subsequently fashioned and adopted surnames with unambiguous religious affiliation.
This page lists people with the surnameCruz. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.
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