I had seen sometime in the past that the actress Alexandra Bastedo mentioned that her family had Sephardic roots.
This prompted me to do some digging of my own.

The only thing I could find saying the name is Jewish or Sephardic is the Sephardim.com surname search here:

http://www.sephardim.com/namelist.shtml?mode=form&from=B...

It's got the name Bastida listed and the notes say:

"(22) From the book, "History of the Jews in Aragon", by Regne. Essentially a series of royal decrees by the House of Aragon. It contains Sephardic names recorded during the period 1213-1327."

I had read about the book "Jews in early America" that supposedly had the names of Jewish people who lived in America up to about 1840.
Only 500 of those books were printed, but using our Inter Library Loan program I was able to borrow a copy from the Brigham Young library.
It made for some good reading, but no form of this family name was found.

I decided to try and get a copy of the Regne book and see what the citation was that is used on the Sephardim website.
I made another ILL request and I was told that an english version is not available, however they could get a French version.
A friend / coworker has an iPhone with an app that does translation in real time, and I have an Android device that does nearly the same thing.
So I requested the French copy. (I don't read French)

I received the book and started looking into it right away.
In the table of contents are listed sections that have names and numbers.
The names are surnames of people who lived in Aragon between 1213 - 1327 and the numbers refer to royal decrees ordered by date.

So the first section of names are Jews, the second section Converts and the third are Non-Jews.

I looked through each section and found no Bastida, until the last section (Non-Jews) and there it was.
"Bastida 1321"

So then I looked up royal decree #1321:

1321. Pedro III donne quittance à l'aljama juive de Lérida de 7.500 sous barcelonais, qu'elle devait remettre à Barcelone entre les mains de Bastida,
pour sa part de contribution aux dépenses de l'armada.
— Lérida, 22 mars 1284-S. Reg. 58, f. 92.

Running this through online translations it seems to be saying that this Bastida was being repaid for contributions he made in raising an armada.

I am sure someone with French language skills could translate it more properly, but it's interesting to find a document about an ancestor from March 22, 1284.

The short story here is summed up by the phrase: Just because you live in a bakery it doesn't make you a bagel.

Some people read on the Sephardim website the name Bastida and assume that means the name is Jewish.
The book being cited has names of people who lived in Aragon between 1213 - 1327. Jewish, converts and non-Jewish. Just because your name is found in the book doesn't make you a Jew.

Not all names in the book are Jews, so it is not safe to assume that because the name is found in that book the name is Jewish.

If a book refers to your name and someone else has made a judgment call about it don't settle until you get the book yourself and read it. You never know what you will find.

Rick Bastedo