Mosquera is a surname of Galician origin, later spreading to other parts of Spain such as Castile and Extremadura or Latin America. The family crest states (Spanish) Gallego. It derives from the mansion of the family's founder, Ramiro de Mosquera. In the fifth century, it was already linked to Moscoso, one of Galicia's oldest notable families. In Galicia, one of the oldest houses was in Coto de Villar de Payo Muniz, a dos leguas from Ourense. Another existed at villa de Vilariño de Conso.
According to etymologists, the name Mosquera is an allusion to a place where the greatest quantity of "aces" grows, and derives itself from the word "moscon", which originally referred to a type of tree.
Part of the family settled in Portugal where the name changed to "Mosqueira". The following names are in the lists of the Order of Carlos III: Gabriel Mosquera and Luis Mosquera y Julián Mosquera.
Antonio Mosquera was born in Spain and was a soldier in the War of Flanders and governor of Puerto Rico. He went to Chile with a thousand men, and arrived at Santiago on October 6, 1605.
As of 2014, 68.6% of all known bearers of the surname Mosquera were residents of Colombia (frequency 1:264), 8.7% of Ecuador (1:689), 7.0% of Venezuela (1:1,635), 4.5% of Spain (1:3,950), 2.7% of the Philippines (1:14,325), 1.9% of Peru (1:6,421), 1.8% of Panama (1:820), 1.4% of Argentina (1:11,512) and 1.2% of the United States (1:111,635).
In Spain, the frequency of the surname was higher than national average (1:3,950) only in one autonomous community: Galicia (1:409).
In Colombia, the frequency of the surname was higher than national average (1:264) in the following departments:[1]