Family name origins & meanings
- Spanish : from centeno ‘rye’ (Late Latin centenum, a derivative of centum ‘hundred’, so called as the plant was supposed to be capable of producing a hundred grains on each stalk). The a surname may have arisen as a metonymic occupational name for someone who grew or sold rye, or a topographic name for someone who lived by a field given over to the cultivation of this crop.