Carmen Montanez

(female) (Spanish) form of Carmel, altered by folk etymology to the form of the Latin word carmen ‘song’. It is now sometimes found as a given name in the English-speaking world, in spite of, or perhaps because of, its association with the tragic romantic heroine of Bizet's opera Carmen (1875), based on a short story by Prosper Mérimée.

Spanish (Montáñez): of uncertain derivation; either a habitational name from Montáñez, a minor place in Granada or an altered spelling of montañées ‘from the mountains’, an adjectival derivative of montaña ‘mountain’.