Costa Family History
Costa Name Meaning
Spanish Catalan Portuguese Galician southern French and Italian: topographic name for someone who lived on a slope or river bank or on the coast (ultimately from Latin costa ‘rib side flank’ also used in a transferred topographic sense) or a habitational name from any of numerous places called with this word. Compare Spanish Cuesta and Lacosta . Jewish (Sephardic): adoption of the Portuguese surname (see 1 above) 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. American shortened (and altered) form of Greek Costas and its standard variant Kostas or of any of various patronymics and other derivatives of this personal name. Compare Kosta Greek (typically Cypriot): variant of the genitival patronymic Kosta Americanized form of Albanian and Czech Kosta 3 4 Croatian Košta (see Kosta ).
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd edition, 2022