Where the Vargas name comes from

Vargas is a Spanish surname of Castilian origin, carried by a noble house. The word behind it is the Spanish varga, which itself comes from pargo. The house was founded by Ivan de Martin, a knight who fought in the reconquest of Madrid in 1083 in the service of Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile. Its ancestral home is at Riocorvo in Cantabria.

Descendants of the family now live across Spain and the Americas. Today the name is found most often in Mexico and Colombia, and it reached the Philippines through the Catalogo alfabetico de apellidos, the alphabetical catalogue of surnames. Vargus is a variant spelling.