at some point in the early inquisition, sephardic conversos in spain and in portugal were forced by the state and catholic church to adopt spanish place or family names as their own. the names that were unique to the jews in spain were of hebrew origin, but those names were then supressed.
that tradition dispersed to the new world and parts of the old world. acosta is both a spanish name and sephardic. not all acostas are of jewish origin, but some families are. the old catholic families, as disticnt from the sephardim,
also share the acosta name.