Inigo derives from the Castilian rendering (Íñigo) of the medieval Basque name Eneko.[1] Ultimately, the name means "my little (love)".[2] While mostly seen among the Iberian diaspora, it also gained a limited popularity in the United Kingdom.

Inigo / Iñigo
GenderMale
Origin
Word/nameBasque
Other names
DerivedBasque Eneko, ene- "mine", -ko (hypocoristic) "my little (love/dear)"
Related namesEneko, Iñaki, Ignatius, Yñigo

Early traces of the name Eneko go back to Roman times, when the Bronze of Ascoli included the name forms Enneges and Ennegenses among a list of Iberian horsemen granted Roman citizenship in 89 B.C.E.[3] In the early Middle Ages, the name appears in Latin, as Enneco, and Arabic, as Wannaqo (ونقه) in reports of Íñigo Arista (c. 790–851 or 852), a Basque who ruled Pamplona. It can be compared with its feminine form, Oneca. It was frequently represented in medieval documents as Ignatius (Spanish "Ignacio"),[citation needed] which is thought to be etymologically distinct, coming from the Roman name Egnatius, from Latin ignotus, meaning "unknowing",[4] or from the Latin word for fire, ignis. The familiar Ignatius may simply have served as a convenient substitution when representing the unfamiliar Íñigo/Eneko in scribal Latin.

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  1. ^ Behind the Name – Inigo
  2. ^ "Nombres: Eneko". Euskaltzaindia (The Royal Academy of the Basque Language). Archived from the original on 2013-11-10. Retrieved 2009-04-23. Article in Spanish
  3. ^ Ángel Martín Duque, "Del espejo ajeno a la memoria propia", in Signos de identidad histórica para Navarra (Pamplona, 1996), vol. 1, pp. 21-50.
  4. ^ 20000 names project