Where the Gonzales name comes from

Gonzales is a Spanish surname of Germanic origin, one of the common spellings alongside Gonzalez and the accented Gonzalez. Its root is a Visigothic name that joined guntho, meaning battle or war, to alf, meaning elf, and Latin recorded it as Gundisalv. As Spanish developed, that name settled into the male given name Gonzalo, and Gonzales formed as a patronymic from it.

The sense carried by Gonzalo is read as a noble warrior, a soldier or a castle guard. An alternate explanation takes the name instead as the worker in metals, or smith. The same name travelled under other spellings, including the French Gonzales and the Portuguese Goncalves.