......a rose by any other name......
We are often asked how we chose the name for our company, since it at first appears to have nothing to do with us. Here's the story.
......right this way, Ms. Smith......
Amaya Urzaa, the founder of the company, has always had difficulty getting people to spell and say her name correctly. (We're thinking you probably already guessed that.) When she was a kid, her parents usually used the name "Smith" to hold restaurant reservations and the like, to avoid having to spell out "Urzaa" and explain how to say it properly. So, Amaya, in considering a name for her company, thought about using "Smith & Associates". But, after looking up the meaning of "Smith", she decided that it wasn't exactly right. She looked deeper into her own name for inspiration.
......would still smell as sweet......
In Basque, the language that "Urzaa" comes from, people were assigned last names based on the house where they were born. As a bit of trivia, before family names became fixed, which first happened during the time of Amaya's great-great-grandfather, members of the same family could have different last names if they had been born in different places. "Ur" means water, and the suffix "tzaa" means place. Urzaa, therefore, roughly means "watery place". Ta-da! Waters & Associates was born.