Luis, Thank you for this information. Whether it was the way the name was said or what the English speaker heard, I believe this explains how there was a morph or evolution of the name. I have also found in the 1860 US census a "DeGrella" in Morgan County, Illinois. The is the area in which the Presbyterian exiles from Madeira had settled after their sojourn in Trinidad. This DeGrella must have also been a de Agrela. But let us not be too hard on the census takers. I say this despite that in the 1880 census my grandfather and great grandmother are indexed simply as "Grella". David DeGrella Tennessee, USA On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 16:27:41 -0800 (PST) Luis Beal <luisbeal@yahoo.com> writes: > It can be but also when we say two vowels in a row we tend to combine > them as one as in the case of "de Agrela" we say "Dagrela" or > "Dalmeida" instead of "de Almeida." It could have also been his > accent as Madeirans have a closed in french sounding accent. Who > knows. When it comes to the census someone once said you need to > imagine a drunken Irish asking a Polish woman for information, and > that is what you get, in this case imagine a drunken Irish asking a > Portuguese woman for information ;) > Luis Beal > > david-nancy.degrella@juno.com wrote: > Luis, > > In addition to pronunciation, English speaking persons may not > understand what they hear. My family name here in the U.S. is DeGrella. > As a "Portuguese" name DeGrella is found only in English speaking > countries. Having found other DeGrellas and DeGrillas that are not > related to me but whose ancestors came from Madeira, raised the question > how did this name come to be. My conclusions is that when a Portuguese > word beginning in a vow is spoken by a person from Portugal, the English > speaking person does not hear the leading vow. Thus when my great > grandfather told the census taken in New York city that his name is > Alexandre de Agrella, the census taker heard it as Alexander DeGrella. > Also when he joined the U.S. Army, his name was written down as DeGrilla. > I believe these types of written records caused my grandfather to use > DeGrella as his name. > (The DeGrillas on Bermuda believe their original Madeiran name to be Aguillar.) > Based upon your experience with both languages, would you agree with this > conclusion? > > Thanks, > David DeGrella > Tennessee, USA