Tovar (surname)
The coat of arms of the Tovar family of Spain and Portugal, as it appears in a 17th-century nobiliary record.
Tovar, usually preceded by the particle de (meaning from), is a surname that was adopted in the Middle-Ages by a Castilian noble house of visigothic ancestry that received the lordship of the village of Tovar from Fernando III. It has since spread to several Spanish and a few Portuguese branches.
The Tovar surname in the Americas appears mainly as a toponymic derived from the many settlements of this name founded there by the Spanish, and therefore does not share the same genealogical origin. Recent DNA testing does show that some families with the Tovar surname in the Americas appear to have descended from the Tovar's of Spain and Portugal.
People
- Alonso Miguel de Tovar, a Spanish baroque painter
- Antonio Tovar, a Spanish linguist and political journalist
- César Tovar, a Venezuelan Major League Baseball player
- Fernando Sánchez de Tovar, a medieval Spanish nobleman and admiral
- Francisco de Paula Vieira da Silva de Tovar, 1st Viscount of Molelos, a Portuguese nobleman and general
- Gregorio López de Tovar, a Spanish nobleman and scholar of the Renaissance
- Luis Felipe Tovar, a Mexican actor
- Juan Sancho de Tovar, 1st Marquis of Berlanga
- Juan de Tovar y Toledo, a Spanish nobleman and military of the Reconquista
- José de Guevara y Tovar, Spanish viceroy of Navarre
- Manuel Felipe de Tovar, President of Venezuela from 1859–1861
- Martín Tovar Ponte, a Venezuelan politician
- Martín Tovar y Tovar, a Venezuelan painter
- Rigo Tovar, a Mexican singer
- Sancho de Tovar, a Castilian-born, Portuguese navigator and explorer
- Sancho de Tovar e Silva, grandson of the former, a Portuguese nobleman and military
See also
- Tovar (disambiguation)