Where the Medina name comes from

Medina began as a place name, taken from the Arabic madinah, meaning city, a word that traces back further to Aramaic. It entered Iberia under the Muslim rule of Al-Andalus, which alongside the Emirate of Sicily and Islamic Malta spans the eighth to the fifteenth century. Spain ended up with a cluster of towns built on the word: Medina del Campo, Medina de Pomar, Medina de Rioseco, Medinaceli, Medina-Sidonia and Medina de las Torres. The same root shaped Medina in Campania and Mdina on Malta.

Many families who came new to those places took the name as a surname during the Reconquista. Conquistadores carried it into the Spanish colonies, and it remains a common Mediterranean surname. English borrowed Medina straight from Spanish, and it has since been used as a female given name as well.