Pinto Family History

Spanish and Jewish (Sephardic): nickname from pinto ‘colorful painted’. Spanish: habitational name from Pinto in Madrid. Catalan (Pintó): variant of Pintor ‘painter’. Portuguese: nickname from pinto ‘chick’. This surname is also found in western India where it was taken by Portuguese colonists.

Italian: from pinto ‘colored painted; having a dark or mottled complexion’ (from Late Latin pinctus for classical Latin pictus ‘painted’) applied as a nickname for a person with a blotchy pock-marked or dark complexion or with graying hair.

Alternatively in some parts of southern Italy it may be from the same word in the sense ‘turkeycock’. Jewish (Sephardic): adoption of 1 2 or 4 at the moment of conversion to Roman Catholicism. After the return to Judaism (generations later) some descendants retained the name their families used as Catholics.