Where the Gonzalez name comes from

Gonzalez is son of Gonzalo, and Gonzalo is Visigothic. It joins guntho, battle or war, to alf, elf, and the Latinised form of the pair was Gundisalv, which Spanish wore down over centuries into Gonzalo. Some read the second half as a hall rather than an elf, on the model of the Old Norse gunnsalaz, which may have been the Visigothic word for a castle before Latin castellum took the job. Gonsalves and Goncalves are the Portuguese cousins of the same name.