Where the Romero name comes from

Romero comes into Spanish from Late Latin Romaeus, which took on the Spanish suffix -ero. Behind that sits the Byzantine Greek Rhomaios, meaning Roman. In the Byzantine Empire that word labelled Westerners who crossed east on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and on to Rome, so the name settled on people who had made the journey. Spanish Romero is a doublet of Romeo, the two words having grown from the same Late Latin root.

A separate line runs through nickname use, where Romero marked an Ancient Roman or a modern Italian, from the Latin Romaeus and the Greek Romaios. Romero later reached the Philippines through the Catalogo alfabetico de apellidos, and it stayed common in Camarines Sur and western Albay, especially around the municipality of Oas.