168 Global Colaco Family Members

Colaco Family History

This is a very interesting Portugese surname of some antiquity. According to a recent Dictionary of Surnames, it derives from the Roman (Latin) word 'collact' meaning 'with milk', and originally referred to an infant child, one who for whatever reason had to be wet nursed. However it seems that the precise meaning is more general, as wet nursing was widely practiced by the nobility, and the name was sometimes given as a form of nickname for a foster child or even a stepchlld. The Romans occupied the Iberian Peninsula of Spain and Portugal for some four hundred years from the 1st to the 5th century a.d.