The second part certainly looks as if it comes from 'amante', which is either a noun meaning "lover" or an adjective meaning "loving": the latter came first. As for the first half, the only Spanish word beginning with 'bust-' is 'busto', which means "bust". Like the English word, it can refer either to a statue missing all the parts below the shoulders, or to a woman's breasts taken as a singular object. (It does not mean 'bust' as in 'break' or the opposite of 'boom'. A 'busto parlante' is what English-speakers call a talking head.) The Oxford Superlex provides only one illustrative sentence: "¿cuánto mide de busto? what size (bust) are you?, what’s your bust size?" So it looks as if Bustamante should mean something like Bustlover or (more colloquially) either Artlover or Hooterman, depending on what kind of bust is involved. On the other hand, Spanish does not usually stick nouns together like this. English and German can compound two nouns to make a third, but Spanish would not normally make a word like 'bust-lover', rather a phrase like 'lover of bust(s)', "amante del busto" or "amante de los bustos", depending on the number of busts loved. bustamante Origin: Spanish Spelling variations of this family name include: Bustamante, Bustamant, Bustamantee, Bustaman, Bustam, Bustamantons and many more. First found in Aragon an ancient Kingdom of Spain. Some of the first settlers of this family name or some of its variants were: Alonso De Bustamente, who arrived in America in 1513; Clemente Bustamante, who came to Peru in 1586; Pedro De Bustamante, who arrived in Florida in 1538.