Spanish surnames ending in -ez

Have you ever wondered why so many Spanish surnames end in -ez?  There must be thousands of them around, and in my sadder moments I’ve often thought of collecting them.

Apparently they work a bit like “Mac” or “-son”, in other words, “ez” means “son of”.   This makes sense – Gonzalez is “son of Gonzalo”, “Alvarez, son of alvaro”, “Sanchez, son of sancho” and so on.

It doesn’t entirely make sense though – could “Perez” be the son of “Pero”?

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