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Origin of our last name

Posted by Claudia Zatarain <argatanas@hotmail.com> on Fri, 04 Apr 2008, in response to Origenes de los Zatarain, posted by Luis Zatarain on Fri, 12 May 2006

Hi. I read your post and i realized that Yolanda Zatarain is my father's aunt, so we are family.
My grandfather is Felipe Zatarain Zatarain.
I've been looking for information about our last name for a long time and i discovered interesting things.
There was a noble family in France (next to the basque country) which last name was Zatarain. During the french revolution they were killed. The ones who survived lost their titles and became merchants.
I know that some people say that our last name comes from the Basque country but remember that place is between Spain and France so its very close. Maybe our ancestors moved to all these places. I've heard from 3 different sources that the word is arabic and it means "flowing river" but other people say it is basque and it means "to rise or to go up"... or something very similar.

Another source: Some arabic people said that many arabic merchants had to leave their homes because of the wars and went to different places (like Mexico and New Orleans).
To recognize each other their lasts names ended in "IN", like Zatarain.

Well... I think all the sources have the resason in some way because the arabic people stayed in Spain during 8 centuries of domination. And the story about the noble ancestors who became merchants fit very well with the arabic merchants story...

Well I hope my English is clear because im not very fluent when talking about serious themes. And I hope is not late for this response. Bye.

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