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Loya Surname

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Loya Surname

Alex Loya (View posts)
Posted: 2 May 1999 6:55PM GMT
Some facts about the Loya surname:
The surname Loya is actually a phonetic modification of 3 different surnames,Loggia, Logia and Loia. All of these three original spellings of the name originate in Italy.
The surnames were modified to the "y" spelling as their Italian bearers migrated from Italy to other countries. One important country in the history of the surname to which the originally Italian forebears migrated is Spain. Actually, the land which became a solar for the surname Loya in what is now Spain did not become a part of Spain but until the 1830's, the Basque province of Navarre, in the areas of Ezprogri and Aoiz. There are no records of the surname Loya in that area before the 17th century.
In the area of Leon in Spain, the word "loya" was briefly used having been introduced to Spain by Italian immigrants who came to help the Christian kings of Leon in the 13th century. At that time the word "loya" was a phonetic modification of the Italian word "loggia" which denotes an atrium or lodge, and from which at least one city in Italy was named. The word "loggia" was preserved in the Italian language to this day, while its phonetic modification "loya" which was introduced into Spain by Italian immigrants in the 13th century, disappeared from the medieval Spanish language altogether and does not exist in that language today. This was due to its foreigness to the Spanish language, it was only briefly used in the 13th century in Spain. What that shows, however, is that some of those who bear the Surname Loya today inherited their name from their Italian ancestors who bore the older Italian spelling Loggia. The Italian Loggia, in turn, was introduced to Italy by Frankish invaders and is itself a modification of the Frankish Loge. So Loya from Loggia is a Frankish-Italian name meaning "atruim".
In Sicily the name Logia was introduced by Greek settlers. This name has also been modified phoneticaly to Loya as the bearers of the name migrated to other countries. In this case, Loya is a phonetic modification from the Greek-Italian name Logia and it denotes a speaker.
The name Loya which was introduced into Basque territory by Italian immigrants and after whom apparently a small village was named, at the foot of the French Pyrenees Atlantiques, at the end of the 16th century, beginning of the 17th century, is a phonetic modification of the Italian Loia. This surname originated in Tuscany, around Pisa. In the 13th century Tuscan miners carried the name, and their language, to the island of Sardinia, which became a solar for the surname within Italy. These Tuscan people exported it to the province of Liguria as well, around the city of Genoa. The surname was thus spread throughout the Italian provinces of Tuscany, Liguria and Sardinia. In 1324 Almirante Carroz from Spain invaded Italy with the Pope's blessing, and for the next 400 years Italy became a dominion of Spain. In the 16th century a common enemy united the Italian provinces of Tuscany, Liguria and Sardinia with their Spaniard overlords, the Muslim Arabs. It was at this time that Genoese immigrants imported their surname, Loia, to Navarre, where it was modified to Loya and where a small hamlet was established by those immigrants and by that name. At that time, Navarre was in the same political status as Italy under Spain, having been a part of France earlier.
In this case the surname Loya is a phonetic modification from the Italian surname Loia. It is a very interesting name because although it is originally from the Tuscan dialect of Italy, it excludes Latin as its source, both phonetically and semantically. It is therefore concluded that it belongs to the Etruscan substratum of the Tuscan dialect. The surname Loya from Loia (today the name may be spelled either way) is a survival from the Etruscan language which disappeared as a language before the time of Christ. Etruscan was preserved as a local dialect until about the 5th century A.D. to then disappear completely. Some words, however, and some place names, belonging to the ancient language of the Etruscans, survived among people who lived in remote villages in Tuscany. These people carried this ancient name to the places to where they migrated i.e. Sardinia and Liguria, to then be exported to Navarre.
Its meaning is not very glorious. Loya/Loia means "dirty". As a name it came to be used to denote a miner, since miners get loia all over their clothes. So, a Loya/Loia is a miner. There is a possibility that it could denote a moraliy dirty individual, but the historical context and the primary meaning of the word favors the denotation of a miner
I hope you find this informative and interesting. Which are your original ancestors, the Frankish-Italian Loggias, the Greek-Italian Logias, or the Etruscan-Italian Loias (Tuscan, Ligurian or Sardinian) depends on which area your family came from. If your family came from the solar in Navarre, in the area of Ezprogri and Aoiz, which is what is more easily and superficially found, chances are that your ancestors were Genoan immmigrants, who migrated at a time of Arabic threat. Those Genoans, of course, were the descendants of Tuscan sailors who were the direct descendants of the ancient Etruscans. Only among those who spoke the original language could such an ancient word have been preserved, in the remote areas of Tuscany.

SubjectAuthorDate Posted
Alex Loya 3 May 1999 12:55AM GMT 
Alex Loya 4 May 1999 11:40PM GMT 
Lori_9112 28 May 1999 11:03PM GMT 
PATRICIO lOYA 8 Jan 2000 3:36PM GMT 
Cecilia Loya Gutierrez-Aurand 30 Jul 2000 2:21AM GMT 
Iliana Loya-Soliz 3 Mar 2001 7:28PM GMT 
joedapope 23 Sep 2012 7:44AM GMT 
love28sept 18 Dec 2012 11:46PM GMT 
inots 23 Jul 2015 4:44PM GMT 
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