Thanks Tian,, now this brings up matters even more in my searches of the deFreitas family, as I now have deSouza, and other names such as Menendez., which I believed to be a surname of a family member. etc.. the possibilites are endless I see. And not nessarily "inherited" names. Lenora ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tian Uddenberg" <tian@shaw.ca> To: <CARIBBEAN-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 7:34 PM Subject: Naming patterns among Portuguese > Listers, > With permission of the writer, I am posting this short account of naming > patterns in Portugal at present. > The writer is D. Kleber, and it was posted at Madeira Exiles -L > I found it informative. > Tian > > In answer to the question: "Can someone explain a bit about Portuguese > naming patterns?" > D. Kleber replies: > > In Portugal/Madeira: > 1. Multiple surnames are common. Two or three is normal. One surname > is > odd. I don't know anyone with just one surname up here in Northern > Portugal. I have a 29 year old friend named Isabel Maria dos Santos > Barbosa > de Oliveira Lopes Pereira da Silva. (Pereira da Silva comes from her > husband.) Her family is from Lisbon. > > 2. If I am not mistaken, prior to 1920 it wasn't even a legal > requirement to > have a surname. (circa 1920 "Regulamento relativo à identificação dos > portadores de Bilhete de Identidade) That is, your legal name could > just be > MARIA... and nothing else. After 1920, once you either reached > adulthood or > requested an official document, you had to "choose" a family name. It > could > be any of the surnames that your family had carried and/or given you. > Using > the example above, you can see that if Isabel was one of your relatives > AND > the others had names like hers then you had many choices for your own, > personal family name: It could be Barbosa, it could be Barbosa de > Oliveira, > perhaps just Lopes, etc, etc. > > 3. It was, and is, common for mothers to give their children their > surnames > as well as their father's surname. Thus the usual minimum of two > surnames. > Often they also throw in some other favorite surname from a > grandparent. > > 4. Devotional names are popular, too. Maria das Dores (literally Mary > of > the Pains, one of my personal favorites), Ana de Conceição, Maria de > Jesus, > Maria dos Santos... These devotional names are used in addition to > surnames. > > 5. The de/do/da isn't really part of the name, unless it is sandwiched > between two other names. That is, "de Freitas" is officially just > "Freitas" > (But "Nunes de Viveiros" is officially "Nunes de Viveiros.") > > 6. Nowadays it seems that siblings up here in Northern Portugal > *USUALLY* > all have the same "main" (usually the father's?) surname, as well as a > few > other surnames which may vary between siblings. In the old days, > siblings > could, and did, have totally different surnames. That is, no common > surname > was required among all siblings. > > 7. UPON ENTERING AMERICA: (a) most Exiles chose to use just one of > their > surnames. Our "Nunes de Viveiros" became NUNES in America, even though, > on > Madeira, Nunes de Viveiros identified a very specific family group... > very > different from someone named just Nunes. (b) Sometimes the "de/da/do" > was > incorporated into the surname. DeFreitas = de Freitas. (c) And, of > course, > the spellings often changed considerably. > > This can all be very confusing but I hope that this helps somewhat. > > In a subsequent posting, the question was asked "Why would syblings of > the same family have different surnames?" > The reply from D. Kleber: > > I can only give you my opinion, because I don't "know" the > reason... > > In the USA, going back at least two centuries, you can often use a > single > surname to track your family. It was inherited through the fathers and > connoted (varying amounts of) familial importance. > Example: My grandfather, after a nasty property dispute, renounced his > family and changed his surname. This was considered the gravest insult > and > says a lot about the depth of dispute. Such was the power of a surname > in > the USA in the early 1900s. > > In Portugal, particularly prior to 1920, I get the impression that a > surname > was used to honor your relatives and/or bless a child. They were not > used > to "track" a family. You will definitely find siblings with different > surnames and you might even find that sometimes your Chris Nunes de > Sousa is > legally recorded as Chris Nunes or perhaps even Chris Sousa. It makes > things tougher for us budding genealogists but it's a lovely idea, once > you > get used to it. > > (I think I read somewhere--but I could DEFINITELY be wrong as I can't > find/quote a source--that you had to have a family link to any surnamed > used. That is, you could give your child a surname from a parent, > grandparent, perhaps great-grandparent but not some random surname. > Anyone > know more about this?) > > > ==== CARIBBEAN Mailing List ==== > all messages posted to CARIBBEAN-L are archived at http://archiver.rootsweb.com/ > Before posting a query, see if the question has already been asked