Where the Alvarez name comes from

Alvarez means son of Alvaro, and Alvaro is a Visigothic name that Iberia kept long after the Visigoths themselves were gone. The same given name threw off three surnames across one border: Alvarez in Spanish, Alvares in Galician and Portuguese, and Alves in Portuguese. The -ez ending is the Spanish way of saying son of, the same ending doing the same work in Rodriguez and Martinez. In Spanish the name is written Alvarez with an accent on the first syllable, and that accent is usually the first thing to go in English.