Family name origins & meanings
- Spanish : variant of Barca 1, from an earlier form.
- Spanish and Galician : habitational name from any of various places called (El or O) Barco, in particular Barco de Ávila (Ávila, Castile) and O Barco (Ourense, Galicia). These are of uncertain origin, possibly from the Celtic element bar- ‘height’, ‘eminence’.
- Spanish and Portuguese : metonymic occupational name for a boatman, from Spanish, Portuguese barco ‘boat’.
- Italian (especially Piemonte, Lombardy, and Veneto) : from barco, which meant ‘boat’ (possibly derived from Spanish) and also ‘garden’, ‘park’, ‘farmyard’, ‘cowshed’, hence a metonymic occupational name for either a boatman or a boatbuilder, or for a park keeper or farmer.