Amaya (given name)

Amaya is a female given name and surname of Spanish, Japanese, and Arabic origins, derived from the village of Amaya and its neighboring mountain in Castile and León, Spain.[1] The name of the village, in turn, has Indo-European roots [2] and means "am (ma)" or "mother". The suffix io-ia is also used to form action names or toponyms, implying that the meaning of Amaya or Amaia is "mother city", as it will be called later, "the capital".[3] Other hypothesis is that the name derived from the Proto-Basque or Basque word Amaia, meaning "the end".[4][1][5] Variations include Amaia, Amayah, Ammaya, and Amya.

Amaya was one of the main villages of the Cantabri Celtic tribes, and played a key role in the Cantabrian wars during the Roman conquest of Hispania, and later, during the Visigothic Kingdom, as the capital of the Duchy of Cantabria. In the first stages of the Reconquista, the city was part of the repopulating efforts of the Kingdom of Asturias in the border region of Bardulia, the primitive territories of Castile.

The given name became popular in the Basque area after the 1877 novel Amaya o los vascos en el siglo VIII. In 1939, according to the language politics of Francoist Spain, women named Miren Amaia had to change their names to María Fin ("Mary End"). In the 1970s, the reasons for prohibition were that it could lead to confusion about gender. It went against good behavior and it was a Gipsy surname.[5]

A Japanese surname Amaya of unrelated origin also exists, "usually written with characters meaning 'heavenly valley'".[1]

Notable people with the name Amaya, as derived from its Spanish origin, include: