Updated June 9, 2019

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Family name origins & meanings

  • Italian : habitational name from Borgia, a place in Catanzaro province, or from Borja in Spain (see Borja).
  • The powerful and notorious Borgia family in Renaissance Rome was of Spanish origin. Rodrigo <xref>Borja</xref> (1431–1503), born in Játiva, Spain, became Pope as Alexander VI. Among his four children by his mistress Vannozza Catanei were Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) and Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519). Cesare was a brilliant but unscrupulous soldier and politician, who was made a cardinal at the age of 17 and was implicated in the murders of both his elder brother and his sister’s husband. Lucrezia was rumored to have been a poisoner and to have had incestuous relations with her father and her brother, but she led a conventional life after her marriage to her third husband, Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, in 1501, and became a patron of the arts and sciences.