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I am German, my family name is Baute. This is a very uncommon name in Germany -- I am directly related to most of the "hits" on that map -- and for quite some time I have been trying to find out where this name actually stems from, and if it might mean anything. Tracing back my family tree ended in 1729, without the name-bearing ancestors ever leaving Germany. Research in German and related languages did not give any satisfying result, which only increased my interest in finding out.

Then, by some inspiration, I entered "Baute" into the English Wikipedia, and was surprised when I came up with several hits, including boxer Victor Manuel Baute, musician Carlos Baute, and politician Paulino Rivero Baute.

I do not speak Spanish, not a word of it, so knowing there are some people from the Spanish-speaking world that share my family name didn't help me much, aside from bringing me here with my questions:

  • Is "Baute" a genuinely Spanish name? Is it common, or uncommon, in the Spanish world?
  • Does it mean anything? If yes, what?
  • If it doesn't mean anything in itself, what word(s) might it be derived from?
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"Baute" does not have any meaning in Spanish.

Regarding the origin, all references have Canary Islands very present, although some also suggest it comes from France.

There are many websites in which you can check the origin of surnames. I do not know how reliable their information is, but let's check a couple of them:

De origen guanche (indígena de Tenerife), derivado del topónimo Ibaute (Ibabte), en la demarcación del menceyato (reino) de Anaga en la isla de Tenerife. En la actualidad, se correspondería con el valle de S. Andrés, en el municipio de Sta. Cruz de Tenerife.

That is,

From guanche origin (indigenous to Tenerife), derived from the place name Ibaute (Ibabte) in the kingdom of Anaga, in Tenerife. Currently, it corresponds to the San Andrés valley, in the municipality of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

From what I see there, the surname has a French origin. Then, some of them emigrated to the Canary Islands, by the coast of Western Sahara.

Since people in that region have spread around the world, mainly to South and Central America, it is not a surprise to find the surname in the people you mentioned. In fact, if you go through the wiki pages you will see that for example Carlos Baute has some ancestors from these islands.

I also found a website in which you can see how frequent a surname is across the world:

http://es.geneanet.org/apellidos/BAUTE

The numbers are quite graphical:

Region #people %
Europe 4230 95.70%
North America 160 3.62%
South and Central America 25 0.57%
Asia 3 0.07%
Africa 2 0.05%

By zooming in on Europe we can see:

Region #people %
France 2557 60.45%
Belgium 1515 35.82%
Netherlands 97 2.29%
Spain 29 0.69%
Germany 22 0.52%
Switzerland 4 0.09%
United Kingdom 3 0.07%
Luxembourg 1 0.02%
Norway 1 0.02%
Czech Republic 1 0.02%

And if you zoom in further on France you can see most of them being present in the south-east, Aquitaine.

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  • This helped me very much, and I'd never have found (or been able to navigate) those websites. Thank you very much! I will leave the question open for a couple of days to encourage others to perhaps add information, but... thank you!
    – DevSolar
    May 8, 2015 at 9:59
  • I am glad to read this, @DevSolar ! It is always tricky to search for information in a language that you do not speak. Maybe you can plan a trip to Canary Islands to check your roots ;)
    – fedorqui
    May 8, 2015 at 10:29
  • AFAICT it's the Spanish "Baute's" who are mostly on the Canary Islands today. Seeing how the French "Baute's" always outnumbered the Spanish by a comfortable margin, I've set my eyes on the Languedoc. Since it will be impossible to actually trace lineage beyond the point I already have (a Baute born 1726 in Wallenbrück, Germany) due to lack of historic documents, I'll settle for getting some info on the name origins and possible meanings. Your information gave me enough to take this to French.SE, for which I am grateful.
    – DevSolar
    May 8, 2015 at 11:11
  • It can also have some Iberic root, which lead to the same final name. However, I see my two sources are a bit contradictory to each other, since one blames that it comes from France and then moved to Canary Islands and the other says that it comes from the Canary Islands local language. Let us know what else you find out!
    – fedorqui
    May 8, 2015 at 11:16
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    Beware that the web es.geneanet.org/apellidos has a significant bias towards France (maybe because there are more contributions from that country?). I have checked several common surnames in Spain (like "León", "López", "Pérez", "Fernández" or "García") and the number of people in France is always higher than in Spain
    – user12422
    May 31, 2016 at 21:27
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I'm 99% sure that it's not any sort of "guanche" surname, reason is guanche population didn't use surnames. But it's hard to fight nationalistic inventions without any base.

Since there are a vast population in france surnamed Baute, it may not be unusual that they reached the Canaries at any point.

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