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Parra

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Parra (Hebrew: גפן) is a Spanish, Portuguese, and also Jewish surname, meaning grapevine or trellis, for example, a pergola. It is taken from the word meaning latticework and the vines raised on it. In Hebrew context the surname is used for Jewish people whose ancestors were wine makers as "Parra" (גפן "Geffen") is the Hebrew word in Spanish for vitis.

01Etymology and history

Among Sephardi Jews, the surname is a toponymic from the town of La Parra, Badajoz in Spain, where there was a large Jewish community before their expulsion from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon by the Alhambra Decree in 1492. Many descendants with the surname, some of them converso, went into exile in Portugal and the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam. In Spain, numerous conversions took place, which is why the surname appears on the lists of the Catholic Church and the Inquisition. It is believed that the origin of the surname lies in the symbolism of the vine and the grapevine, which for the Jewish people means the People of Israel that grows and multiplies. Thus the fields of vines were called "fields of roses" because Israel was the "mystical rose".

At the beginning of the 19th century in the city of Buda, in Hungary, more than half a thousand Sephardic Jews were listed with the surname Parra.

02People with the surname

de la Parra

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Parra, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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