SpanishMexican3 syllables
Meaning: Moorish; dark-skinned.
Mauricio
Mauricio began as the Latin word for a North African and became one of the standard names of Catholic Spain. Both halves of that sentence are true at the same time.
| Origin | Spanish form of the Late Latin Mauritius, an adjective built on Maurus |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Moorish, dark-skinned. Maurus was the Roman word for an inhabitant of Mauretania, the province covering today's Morocco and western Algeria; Mauritius is the adjective made from it |
| Pronunciation | mow-REE-syoh in Latin America, mow-REE-thyoh in most of Spain. The au is a single syllable, as in "how" |
| Popularity | Outside the current U.S. top 100 and uncommon in America; an ordinary men's name in Mexico, Chile and Argentina |
| Variants | Maurice (French, English), Maurizio (Italian), Maurício (Portuguese), Moritz (German), Maurycy (Polish) |
| Nicknames | Mau, Mauri, Mauricito |
| Same root | Mauretania, the island of Mauritius — named for the Dutch stadtholder Maurice of Nassau — and the Spanish adjective moreno all go back to Maurus |
History & meaning
The Romans called the Berber peoples of the far western Mediterranean Mauri, and gave their territory the name Mauretania. Maurus as a personal name simply meant a man from there, or a dark-complexioned man, and by the fourth century it had produced the adjectival Mauritius. That is the form attached to the soldier saint. According to an account written by Eucherius, bishop of Lyon, in the fifth century, Maurice commanded a legion recruited in the Egyptian Thebaid and was executed with his men at Agaunum, in what is now Switzerland, for refusing an imperial order. The story is a hagiography rather than a chronicle and should be read as one, but its consequences were concrete: Maurice became a patron of the Holy Roman Emperors, and from the thirteenth century German artists began depicting him as a Black African. The sandstone statue in Magdeburg Cathedral, carved around 1240, is the famous one.
From church Latin the name split cleanly across the Romance languages — Maurizio in Italian, Maurice in French, Mauricio in Spanish — and here the story turns slightly strange. Castile spent centuries defining itself against the moros, and yet a name that transparently means Moorish stayed in perfectly ordinary use throughout. The reason is that by then nobody heard the noun inside it. It had been a saint's name for a thousand years, and a saint's name is not a description. Spanish America inherited it as a matter of course; twentieth-century Mexico, Chile and Argentina gave it steadily, and it is now one of those names that dates a man to a decade without ever having been a fad.
Why parents choose it
It offers the pleasing arrangement of a long formal name with a one-syllable street name inside it. Mau does everything a nickname needs to do, and Mauricio is what goes on the diploma. It also fares better in English than its cousin does: Maurice reads as a name from 1930, and Mauricio does not read as dated at all.
Middle names for Mauricio
Three syllables ending in -o will start to sound like a chant if the middle name matches them, so break the rhythm: Mauricio Esteban, Mauricio Rubén, Mauricio Felipe, Mauricio Vicente. The middle names guide works through the stress patterns.
Famous Mauricios
Mauricio Garcés spent the late 1960s and early 1970s playing the same unflappable seducer in Mexican comedies, to the point where the name carried a wink for a whole generation of filmgoers. Mauricio Macri was president of Argentina from 2015 to 2019, having run Boca Juniors before that. Mauricio Pochettino has managed Tottenham Hotspur, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea.
Consider instead
Maurice is the identical name in English and French, currently out of fashion and therefore quietly available. Ignacio offers the same trade — a long, formal Spanish name that collapses to a blunt short one, in this case Nacho. Rodrigo keeps the three syllables and the -o but swaps the Roman background for a Gothic one. There are further M names to compare.