Spanish Surnames Ending in "-ez"

[Bob Greaves]

I have heard that the ending "-ez" at the end of names is equivalent to the English "-son" (e.g. Martinez and Johnson).
Can someone confirm whether this is correct, and if it is correct what is the derivation of "-ez". (Is it a contracted form of something? is is from ancient Spanish etc?)
Thanks
Bob

[deecree]

From Wikipedia:

'Son of' and 'ez'

Although the use of double surnames renders the matter far less common than in the English-speaking world, a man who has the identical name to his father may suffix his name with "(h)" (standing for "hijo", meaning "son"), analogously to the English language "Jr.".
In Spanish, most surnames ending in "-ez" originated as patronymics. Thus "López" originally meant "son of Lope", "Fernández" meant "son of Fernando", etc. Other common examples of this are "Hernández" (from Hernando, a variant of "Ferdinand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand)" / "Fernando"), "Rodríguez" (from "Rodrigo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigo)"), "Sánchez" (from "Sancho"), "Martínez" (from "Martín (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin)"), and "Álvarez" (from "Álvaro"). Not all last names in -ez have this origin, however. Because the Spanish letter "z" is pronounced identically to the letter "s" in parts of Andalusia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andalusia) and in all of Spanish America (or about 9/10 of the Spanish-speaking world), one finds Spanish America spellings such as "Chávez" (e.g. Hugo Chávez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez)), "Cortez" (e.g. Alberto Cortez (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alberto_Cortez&action=edit)) and Valdez, which are not patronymics and which traditionally were (and in Spain still are) always spelled "Chaves" (e.g. Manuel Chaves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Chaves_Gonz%C3%A1lez)), "Cortés" (e.g. "Hernán Cortés (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s)") and Valdés. The new spellings were no doubt created by analogy with the large number of last names in -ez.
After the recognition of co-official languages in Spain, the law allowed the translation or respelling of names to the official languages.

[Brian]

Very interesting! Thanks, deecree. Similar to the Mc or Mac in Irish/Scottish nomenclature.

[Bob Greaves]

deecree
Thanks for a great answer. I never thought to look in Wikipedia, but have now found it - and what an excellent write up it is.
Bob