The Spanish and Portuguese surname Chavez is an habitational name from a place in the province of Tras-os-Montes named Chaves, from Latin (aquis) Flaviis, ‘(at the) waters of Flavius’. The place was the site of sulfurous springs with supposedly health-giving properties, around which a settlement was founded in the 1st-century ad by the Emperor Vespasian. The earliest records of the name include  Bernarda de Chavey who married Manuel Lorenzo de Eescobar at Cordoba, Spain, on July 1st 1642, Antonio Chaves de Javier, at San Pedro, Navarra, on May 18th, 1660, and Juan Antonio Chavez who married Elizabetha Fourquier at Madrid, on June 1st, 1742. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Diego de Chavez, which was dated 1531, christened at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Get a crest ring today!