Puerto Rican surnames can reveal the location in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Corsica, Caribbean islands, or somewhere else in the world that various parts of your family originated. (Unfortunately, our indigenous and African names will remain a mystery forever but DNA can help in determining that.)You may find a English name that may reveal an ancestor from St. Not all Puerto Rican surnames are Spanish and that revelation may be the key to creating your family tree. Surnames can also reveal a little bit more about the founding of the towns in Puerto Rico. What kind of information do surnames reveal?Īnother purpose of investigating Puerto Rican surnames is that it gives a peek into your deeper past. By using the names as clues, you should be able to amass quite a number of relatives! Confusion avoided! The census in Puerto Rico is available online for 1910, 1920 (limited), 1930, and 1940. This happened in my own family but I had already found the sets of siblings in the 1910 census and then found them with their children in the 1930 census. For example: if sisters Juana and Belen Diaz y Rodriguez were to marry brothers Luis and Jose Centeno y Laboy all of the children will have the last names: Diaz y Centeno. Because the villages and towns were relatively small, you will find that there are rarely more than one family with the same two last names.unless that is if a set of brothers marry a set of sisters. How? By looking at the two last names! Of course, you need to cross-check it to the ages to be sure it makes logical sense. So if you find an ancestor, if you look at the pages before and after, it is very likely that you will find siblings. They often set up a home just next door and down the road from parents and siblings. (I explain this on another page.) Most of Puerto Rico was rural and groups of families populated the villages and towns. If you are looking through the Puerto Rican censuses, you will see that outside of the metropolitan areas (San Juan, Santurce, Ponce, Bayamon) the homes do not have addresses. And of course, the most obvious, there is no issue with finding maiden names! It is amazingly easier to trace back further generations with the mother's name already known. Third, upon discovering cousins or grandchildren living in the home, you can investigate to find out who the parents are by tracing the two last names. Second, it aids in finding siblings if you are looking to create a larger family tree. First, because it is easy to track a person over periods of time in various documents. To the average American, that seems like a mouthful but for a genealogist, it is a practice that is extremely useful for various reasons. Maria Luisa Rivera Garcia de Felicianoor Maria Luisa Rivera y Garcia de Feliciano.) Tomas Rivera y Castro.) Upon marriage, a Puerto Rican woman could choose to add her husband's last name by adding the word de meaning 'of' before her husband's first last name. Maria Luisa Rivera Garcia.) You may find it written with or without the word y meaning 'and' between the two last names. A child born would be given a first and middle name and then the first last name of the father followed by the first last name of the mother. Puerto Rican genealogy is made exponentially easier because of the use of multiple surnames. Puerto Rico used the Spanish practice of using the last names of both parents. Puerto Rican last names can seem a bit confusing but it is actually a gift. Yes really, your bisabuela probably had three last names.
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