Carmen Santiago

(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.

Galician, Portuguese, and Spanish: habitational name from any of the numerous places named for the dedication of their churches to St. James (Sant Iago). The apostle St. James the Greater is the patron saint of Spain; there is a medieval legend that, after the death of Christ, he did not meet a speedy end under Herod Agrippa, but visited and evangelized the Iberian peninsula. His alleged burial site at Compostela has been a place of pilgrimage from all over Europe for over a thousand years.