On portuguese surnames

Also fact that portuguese laws at those times stipulated all children needed to be registered within 1-3 months of birth. There were many stories of parents walking in with kids who had already started walking to register them and picking a date of birth 2 months before.

Speaking of clerical errors. My mother was born on sep 11 but all official documents stated she was born on September 14.

And I thought home affairs in rural South Africa was bad :eek:

My surname is German so it's probably not much help, do have an aunt who is married to a Serrão though, but in both my surname, and Serrão the inclusion of the umlaut (in mine) or the tilde seems arbitrary. I heard from someone in the dorms with me at college who had the same surname as me (minus the umlauts) that it was only the eldest son who was entitled to the umlauts on the surname, while the younger sons spelled it without them. Thus, what is classed as two surnames is actually one. Same goes for my aunt's husbands family. Some of them spell Serrão with the tilde, some of them drop it. (Have you ever had a foreign surname with a fancy letter in it mangled in the mouth of an official who can barely speak English, let alone whatever language you've got for a surname? Or the headache of when they tell you that you're not on the system because the computer can't register those letters and so drops them hence Serrão would become 'Serr_o' or 'Serro' etc etc.).

Not sure if this helps. Although i seems more how surnames stop being regarded as separate entities (Serrão vs Serrao) due to a grammatical change and are sort of collapsed into one (Serrao/Serro).
 

Lusitania

Donor
And I thought home affairs in rural South Africa was bad :eek:

My surname is German so it's probably not much help, do have an aunt who is married to a Serrão though, but in both my surname, and Serrão the inclusion of the umlaut (in mine) or the tilde seems arbitrary. I heard from someone in the dorms with me at college who had the same surname as me (minus the umlauts) that it was only the eldest son who was entitled to the umlauts on the surname, while the younger sons spelled it without them. Thus, what is classed as two surnames is actually one. Same goes for my aunt's husbands family. Some of them spell Serrão with the tilde, some of them drop it. (Have you ever had a foreign surname with a fancy letter in it mangled in the mouth of an official who can barely speak English, let alone whatever language you've got for a surname? Or the headache of when they tell you that you're not on the system because the computer can't register those letters and so drops them hence Serrão would become 'Serr_o' or 'Serro' etc etc.).

Not sure if this helps. Although i seems more how surnames stop being regarded as separate entities (Serrão vs Serrao) due to a grammatical change and are sort of collapsed into one (Serrao/Serro).
Yes each country is unique but depending on language accents and special characters get dropped or substituted. Sebastião becomes Sebastian. Blanc becomes white. As people assimilate more they chose spelling that easier to pronounce and write in the Area they live.

Knew in Portugal that people could not name their kids with non Portuguese names. Charles or William we’re not allowed
 
Also fact that portuguese laws at those times stipulated all children needed to be registered within 1-3 months of birth. There were many stories of parents walking in with kids who had already started walking to register them and picking a date of birth 2 months before.

Speaking of clerical errors. My mother was born on sep 11 but all official documents stated she was born on September 14.

In rural Brazil it was common for the couples to wait for long periods before registering their children. If the infants died they didn't have to go to the city and pay the register. My father for example was born in April 21st but was registered in September as if he was born in June 27th. My grandfather is even worse. He was born in August 1910, and was registered in January 1911. But his parents only registered their own marriage in July 1911, as they didn't understand that it was necessary a civil marriage (they only had the religious one, that was celebrated in 1907).
 
Is this similar to Spain's situation where some regions like Catalonia or the Basque Country have a huge diversity of surnames, but in other regions like Castille or Andalusia the number of surnames is relatively small?

Not really, as Silva is already 9% of the portuguese mainland and the list of common surnames is pretty equal to Brazil's, with slight differences.

How were former slaves given their surnames in Brazil? In the US, most slaves tended to adopt their former master's surname. Did a lot of people named Silva own slaves in Brazil?

And I thought home affairs in rural South Africa was bad :eek:

My surname is German so it's probably not much help, do have an aunt who is married to a Serrão though, but in both my surname, and Serrão the inclusion of the umlaut (in mine) or the tilde seems arbitrary. I heard from someone in the dorms with me at college who had the same surname as me (minus the umlauts) that it was only the eldest son who was entitled to the umlauts on the surname, while the younger sons spelled it without them. Thus, what is classed as two surnames is actually one. Same goes for my aunt's husbands family. Some of them spell Serrão with the tilde, some of them drop it. (Have you ever had a foreign surname with a fancy letter in it mangled in the mouth of an official who can barely speak English, let alone whatever language you've got for a surname? Or the headache of when they tell you that you're not on the system because the computer can't register those letters and so drops them hence Serrão would become 'Serr_o' or 'Serro' etc etc.).

Not sure if this helps. Although i seems more how surnames stop being regarded as separate entities (Serrão vs Serrao) due to a grammatical change and are sort of collapsed into one (Serrao/Serro).

Omitting special characters can lead to bad results, like Peña (common Hispanic surname meaning "cliff") vs Pena (cognate with English "pain"). I'm just glad my own (Finnish) surname can only be mangled in pronunciation (by most everyone, but Americans of Italian, Polish, etc. origin have the same result) and not in other ways (unlike common Finnish surnames like "Mäkinen" or whatever). I don't know what Pekka Hämäläinen, Finnish historian of American Indians, has had to deal with (three umlauts!), but I did manage to get one history professor who later attended a conference with him to pronounce his name correctly.
 
Brazilian slaveals generally took their masters surnames. Anyway, Brazil's top 10 surnames are all similar to the portuguese in proportions, with slight differences in order, so the way blacks and natives were assimilated there isn't quite relevant for a thing that also applies to the mainland.
 
Yes each country is unique but depending on language accents and special characters get dropped or substituted. Sebastião becomes Sebastian. Blanc becomes white. As people assimilate more they chose spelling that easier to pronounce and write in the Area they live.

Knew in Portugal that people could not name their kids with non Portuguese names. Charles or William we’re not allowed
Nowadays there's a bit more tolerance, but currently a kid's name has to be chosen from this list:
http://www.irn.mj.pt/sections/irn/a...ta_de_nomes_2017_11.pdf?nocache=1510228284.96
 

Lusitania

Donor
Nowadays there's a bit more tolerance, but currently a kid's name has to be chosen from this list:
http://www.irn.mj.pt/sections/irn/a...ta_de_nomes_2017_11.pdf?nocache=1510228284.96
When I arrived in Canada back in early 1970 there were still old teachers who were adamant on anglicizing kids names.

Carlos was charles
Maria was Mary
George was Jorge.

In my case my mother had to go to the school with interpreter to force the teacher to address me with my baptized name not her anglicized name.
 
When I arrived in Canada back in early 1970 there were still old teachers who were adamant on anglicizing kids names.

Carlos was charles
Maria was Mary
George was Jorge.

In my case my mother had to go to the school with interpreter to force the teacher to address me with my baptized name not her anglicized name.

According to state records in the United States, my great-great grandmother's surname was "Lumatainen" instead of "Liimatainen" as was recorded in Finland. Clearly a common issue.
 
According to state records in the United States, my great-great grandmother's surname was "Lumatainen" instead of "Liimatainen" as was recorded in Finland. Clearly a common issue.

I think this would not be a case of Anglicization, as such, but rather a misreading/misunderstanding stemming from a clerk, etc, interpreting the double I as an U. In my experience, the Finnish double wovels tend to trip up non-Finnish speakers.

Incidentally, there are no Lumatainens in Finland, whereas Liimatainen is a semi-common surname, especially in Central Finland. But then you probably already knew that.:) What you might not know, though, is that President Urho Kekkonen used "Liimatainen" as a pseudonym to write columns in the Suomen Kuvalehti in between 1966-75. For the first years, he even managed to conceal his actual identity.
 
Last edited:
Do you guys have some funny (in meaning) surnames in your countries? Because the area where I live in Croatia has a lot of them.
 
The situation is even more extreme in Korea, where the 3 most frequent names Kim (22%), Lee (16%) and Park (10%) are held by almost half the ethnically Korean population and in ViệtNam, where the 3 most frequent names Nguyễn (38%), Trần (11%) and Lê (10%) account for close to 60% of the polulation.
For Vietnam, it's because people used to change their last name when a new dynasty came. Apparently it was to avoid trouble by being seen as "aligned" to the old dynasty
 
Top