Where the Cruz name comes from

Cruz is the Spanish and Portuguese word for cross. It was first found in Castile and then travelled everywhere the two empires went, which is why Vera Cruz, the true cross, and Santa Cruz, the holy cross, sit on maps across two continents.

The surname spread in particular after 1492, when families of Jewish and Moorish descent converting under the Alhambra Decree took names that left no question about the new religion. So a Cruz can be a name of devotion or a name of shelter, and for many families it was both at once.