Where the Moreno name comes from

Moreno began as a nickname, from the word meaning "dark" in Spanish and Portuguese. The nickname settled into a family name, carried in French, Ladino, Portuguese, Sephardic and Spanish use, and occasionally in Italian. The name then travelled wherever Spanish did, and both English and Tagalog borrowed the surname straight from it. In the Philippines, 937 people carried the name Moreno in 2014. In the United States the 2010 census counted 196,925 people named Moreno, which made it the 124th most common surname in the country.