Fidalgo

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Fidalgo, from the Portuguese filho de algo, in english "son of some (important family)", is a traditional title given since the XV'th century in Portugal, and later in Brazil, to persons of the higher nobility. The Fidalgo is comparable in some ways to the French Gentilhomme (the word also implys nobility by birth or by charge) and to the Italian Nobile, but not to the English Gentry and Gentleman, nor to the castilian and later spanish concepts of Hidalgo.