The Pimentel family is an old Portuguese Iberian aristocratic family that belonged to both, the Portuguese and Spanish nobility & Sephardic Jews [1]
Pimentel is also a Portuguese, Spanish, Sephardic Jewish surname denoting pepper - merchant/trader of plants and spices.
The association with peppers and spices suggests the name's roots in farming and trade and the cultivated lands themselves.
Ancestry of the surname has been linked to João Afonso Pimentel, a Portuguese knight. [2]
The name spread throughout the Portuguese Empire and the subsequent Portuguese Sephardic Jewish diaspora, as well as the House of Pimentel, a Spanish noble family of Portuguese origin (Benavente) established in the Crown of Castile.
In the history of the Jews in Portugal, the name is often traced to Sephardi Jews, specifically the conversos to Catholicism during the Portuguese Inquisition. Tribunal records now maintained in the Torre do Tombo National Archive contain hundreds of examples of New Christian Pimentels who were accused of relapsing into Judaism by the tribunals of the Portuguese inquisition..[ citation needed ]
The Pimentel surname was associated with prominent Portuguese Christian & New Christian spice traders throughout the 16th & early 17th centuries.[ citation needed ]
