Common surnames in Portugal. (fwd)
Francisco Antonio Doria
>
> Chico,
> As you say.
> I was stationed in Spain for three years. A friend of mine, at my
> suggestion, took his parents visiting from Puerto Rico to the town of
> Silva, just north of Madrid. Their name was Silva. They were told by
> the priest they were Sephardim.
> The Sephards were brought to Spain and Portugal long before the the Goths
> and Moors and many had been converted. By 1492 more than 750,000 are
> estimated to have lived in Spain and Portugal.
>
> No argument here
>
> Harry
>
Harry,
Please, I have absolutely no intention of starting one of those long,
desperate discussions on minor quibbles. Portuguese family names are
known since the 11th century. Before that you just had the
name-patronymic system. First known family names are either locatives,
`de Sousa,' `da Silva' - means, from the forest. literally, `de Moreira,'
which is short for `da quinta de Moreira,' (from the farm [=quinta] with
lots of blackberries [amoreiras]), or nicknames, Bulha~o [bully], St
Anthony's family name.
As I said, the Silva family is very old and can be traced up to Paio
Guterres, lord of Silva, in the 11th century (Mattoso has a good
discussion in his `Identificac,ao de um pais,' I, Ed. Estampa). They
married into the Telles de Meneses in the 14th century and formed the
Silva de Meneses and Teles da Silva e Meneses family. The dukes of
Silva-Tarouca (Austria), counts of Tarouca, marquesses of Alegrete and
Vagos all descend from those people.
Name-giving was a very complicated affair. A Brazilian historian, Evaldo
Cabral de Mello, has recently discussed (O Nome e o Sangue, 1990) the
origin of a well-known Sephardic family which settled in Pernambuco. You
can trace it up to the mid-15th century; when they become conversos they
adopt the name Sa' Maia. Why? Nobody knows, despite the fact that there
is a lot of first-hand evidence about them. I also have some ancestors of
half-converso origin with the name Sa' (Antonio de Sa' Doria, who died in
Bahia, Brazil, in 1660) but which we can only trace to their Jewish
origins where the Sa' surname appears out of the blue.
I mentioned the fact that family names were very unstable in Portugal.
Somehow they went together with first names - which might indicate a
`hidden' surname. Again with an example from my own family: the double
first name `Martim Afonso' and `Martinho Afonso' appear - documentally
attested - in my family from the 15th century to the 19th century,
appended to various surnames. `Martim Afonso' was a well-known
combination in the Sousa do Prado and Melo/Merlo/Merlis families, and in
fact one of our classical 18th-century genealogists hints at a connection
with the Sousa. (Please, I'm not claiming it, just mentioning it en
passant.) Somehow `Martim Afonso' was coupled to `de Mendonc,a' in the
17th century, and from then onwards I can find several related homonymous
people of that name. For instance, the last Martinho Afonso de
Mendonc,a (1772-1856), fifth or sixth, was the son of Antonio Sotero de
Vasconcelos and of Maria Teles de Meneses. Whence his name? From his
paternal grfather, Martinho Afonso de Mendonc,a II, son of Cristovao da
Costa Doria and Catarina de Vasconcelos, and gson of Martim Afonso de
Mendonc,a I and Joana Barbosa.
It's a selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte/che nel pensier' rinova la paura...
Next to that medieval genealogy is simple.
Chico Doria
Francisco Antonio Doria
>
> Chico,
>
> You obviously have your mind made up, so no discussion is possible,
> quibble or other wise.
Please, I'm not dogmatic. However I know that there were people named Silva
in the early 12th century, precisely when family names appear in
Portugal, and they weren't Jewish. They became powerful nobles a couple
of centuries later. Jewish Silvas appear much later, in the late
15th-early 16th century.
> One question you might try to answer in your own
> mind is, if the names held by these people were provided by the church or
> otherwise given to them, why did they not shed these names after escaping
> Spain and Portugal?
Not always. The converso name might be very different from the original
Jewish name. I quote from memory, but the Jewish Benveniste became da
Vitoria after baptism. (I mean the bishop of Tucuma'n, a famous converso;
branches of that family exist in Brazil.)
> That was the methodology, take your name and
> religion back when you arrived in places like Hamburg, London, Amsterdam,
> Salonika, etc. As an example, one of my wife's ancestors was converted
> and was given the name Juan de Sevilla. Ten years later he was in Lisbon
> and dropped that name and went back to Abravanel.
Abravanel is Jewish, ladino for `little Abraham.' Abarbanello,
Abramnello. At least that's the best explanation. (Cf. Benveniste, `you
arrived in good shape.')
> I have met to many
> Iberians who refuse to consider their past.
That's not my case. My children have a Jewish family name from my wife.
And I can patch up my ancestry up to the mulatto mistress of a canon in
early 19th century in the Brazilian hinterland better than my `most noble'
pedigree through Dorias and Acciaiuolis et caterva.
> There is still a holiday in
> the Spanish Church called beating the Jews. Ushers run up and down the
> isle beating imaginary Jews.
We don't have that kind of tradition in Brazil.
> Clean blood is important.
That's not my case. I'm a mongrel, a street dog. My Alsatian dog has a much
better pedigree than I do.
> I am not
> desperate -- a poor choice of words. I represent the family Abravanel,
> if you know Portuagal you should recognize the name.. By the name Mello
> is also Sephardic.
No no no, again. The Mello family (Merlis, originally) took their name
from the Villa de Merlo. They are an illegitimate branch of the Riba de
Vizela clan. Mingled with royalty (the Albuquerque family) in the 14th
century and now the family has the duke of Cadaval (Pereira de Mello) as
its head. Plus the marquess of Sabugosa and several other grandees.
>
> Lets just agree to disagree.
Let's be friends.
Chico Doria
Francisco Antonio Doria
>
> Dear Chico
> You are of course perfectly right in what concerns the >cristãos novos<
> surnames. They took them from old established Portuguese families, and not
> the other way around, since their original names were Jewish ones. This
> happened because, although the >Ordenacoes Manuelinas<, the early 16th
> century code of laws, prescribed that >ninhuma pessoa de qualquer condicam
> que seja, daqui em diante nom tome apelido de Fidalgo de Solar conhecido<,
> it allowed an exception to those who >nouamente se tornarem aa Nossa Sancta
> Fee< (see my >Patriciado Urbano Quinhentista: As Familias Dominantes do
> Porto -1500-1580<, Porto, 1997, PP.409-412).
So you are the author of that thesis! I saw it mentioned by Mattoso in
his new *History of Portugal* and asked the Univ. of Porto librarian for
a copy. You mean that it has appeared as a book? Please give me the
complete reference.
> However there is still no explanation to my original question: a great
> number of Portuguese family names were established in the middle and lower
> middle strata during the 16th century. In comparison to English, German,
> and as Christian Feuillet tells us, to French, no profession surnames were
> adopted (the same apparently happened in Spain), instead the old noble
> family names were taken by all and sundry (the most common surname in
> Portugal today is Silva), notwithstanding it being strictly forbidden by
> the >Ordenacoes<. My only explanation is the growing social despise in
> which the so called >mechanical professions< were then held.
I do agree with you, together with the fact that many families took their
names from female ancestors. (Cf. the descendants of Alvaro Pais, who
became Albuquerque and Cunha - old noble family names - in the late 15th
century.)
> I would not agree with you in what concerns the etymology of COSTA. I don´t
> think it refers to (sea) coast but indeed to >costelas< (ribs). Remember
> that the COSTAS's coat of arms represents exactly six ribs.
`Costa' is also a shoemaker's tool, which looks like a single rib. Anyway
the main Costas - now represented by the count of Mesquitela, da Costa de
Sousa de Macedo - have a very modest origin. (The 1950 *Anuario da
Nobreza* mentions a 17th century forgery, that those people are a branch
of the old de Lemos family; it's totally incorrect. They came from very
poor people who lived in the Beira in the 15th century. Their very fast
ascension, similar to the de la Poles in England, was due to Cardinal dom
Jorge da Costa, who cared a lot for his kin.)
>
> Regards
> Pedro de Brito
>
>
Chico Doria
Pedro de Brito
Francisco Antonio Doria <do...@omega.lncc.br> escreveu no artigo
<980302213...@omega.lncc.br>...
> >
> > Chico,
> >
> > You obviously have your mind made up, so no discussion is possible,
> > quibble or other wise.
> its head. Plus the marquess of Sabugosa and several other grandees.
>
> >
> > Lets just agree to disagree.
>
> Let's be friends.
>
> Chico Doria
>
Dear Chico
You are of course perfectly right in what concerns the >cristãos novos<
surnames. They took them from old established Portuguese families, and not
the other way around, since their original names were Jewish ones. This
happened because, although the >Ordenacoes Manuelinas<, the early 16th
century code of laws, prescribed that >ninhuma pessoa de qualquer condicam
que seja, daqui em diante nom tome apelido de Fidalgo de Solar conhecido<,
it allowed an exception to those who >nouamente se tornarem aa Nossa Sancta
Fee< (see my >Patriciado Urbano Quinhentista: As Familias Dominantes do
Porto -1500-1580<, Porto, 1997, PP.409-412).
However there is still no explanation to my original question: a great
number of Portuguese family names were established in the middle and lower
middle strata during the 16th century. In comparison to English, German,
and as Christian Feuillet tells us, to French, no profession surnames were
adopted (the same apparently happened in Spain), instead the old noble
family names were taken by all and sundry (the most common surname in
Portugal today is Silva), notwithstanding it being strictly forbidden by
the >Ordenacoes<. My only explanation is the growing social despise in
which the so called >mechanical professions< were then held.
I would not agree with you in what concerns the etymology of COSTA. I don´t
think it refers to (sea) coast but indeed to >costelas< (ribs). Remember
that the COSTAS's coat of arms represents exactly six ribs.
Regards
Pedro de Brito
Tshaller
How about surnames from the Azores, my wife has ancestry from Fayal in The
Azores