Pardo (surname)

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Pardo (Hebrew: פרדו) is a very old surname of Sephardic Jewish origin and judaite tribe ^[1] that derives from the Greek and Latin name Pardus which means leopard, to later change to Spanish Pardo meaning (Spa: marrón / Eng: brown-grey) and referring to the color of the feline, in Latin "Panthera pardus" (leopard). Israel was conquered by the Greeks and Romans, and many Jews began to adopt Greeks and Latin names. This surname belongs to the Jewish people who settled in the Iberian Peninsula, specifically in Sagunto (Murviedro), Valencia, being at that time the ancient Roman province of Hispania, which later with the arrival of Christianity, some Jews would convert to have a better social status, this being long before being forced to convert to Christianity by the Catholic Monarchs or their subsequent expulsion. Today it is also found in countries including Israel, Spain, Colombia, Greece, Turkey, the United States, Curaçao, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile and Italy. Members of the Pardo family have distinguished themselves mainly in the Levante region of the Mediterranean.

Traces of Jewish life are known in the Iberian peninsula since Roman times, since those Jews exiled from Jerusalem were in these territories as slaves of Romans, including those with cognomen Pardus. Centuries later the Jews would have been expelled from the Iberian peninsula, first from Spain (1492) and then from Portugal (1496). This diaspora led many Sephardic Jews to settle in cities of the Ottoman Empire, in many cases sponsored by its authorities, who not only welcomed this group of immigrants, but encouraged them to settle in regions that had not long been conquered, to consolidate Ottoman sovereignty.

This surname spread after the different persecutions by the Catholic Monarchs. Many Jews were forced to leave Spain and spread to various European territories, such as Thessaloniki (Greece), Bitola (city of North Macedonia), the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and after the conquest of America they went to the new Spanish colonies, where persecution continued under the auspices of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.