Talk:Portuguese name

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[edit] Merge and rename

There's a lot more about Portuguese naming customs at Iberian naming customs. However, I've also noticed, looking at the page personal name, that most nationalities have a page of their own for their naming conventions. I don't see why Portuguese names should be lumped together with Spanish and Catalan names, given that there are significant differences between the two groups. So, I'm proposing that what is currently at Iberian naming customs about Portuguese be moved here, and that this article be renamed "Portuguese names". Any objections...? FilipeS 20:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

No. I agree. Of course Iberian naming customs should be renamed Spanish naming customs! I also think that Portuguese naming customs is better than Portuguese surnames. The Ogre 20:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure about renaming Iberian naming customs "Spanish naming customs". There's some stuff about Catalan names in there, too. I would just move the bits on Portuguese here. If Catalan speakers wish to move to an article of their own, they can propose the split themselves. FilipeS 20:55, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I have a problem with that. Iberian means the whole Iberian Peninsula, including Spain and Portugal. If the article Iberian naming customs only comprises Spain, then it should be named Naming customs in Spain! The Ogre 01:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, good point. Which would mean eventually deleting Iberian naming customs... FilipeS 10:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Well... not deleting, just renaming, that is to say, using the Move option. The Ogre 23:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Merger completed. FilipeS 23:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other discussions

Previous discussions can be found at Talk: Spanish naming customs. FilipeS 23:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Toponymics

The use of "de/da/do" is very often used to implicate toponymics, ie. places where those people come from, and was also used, once in a while, for the nobility, although in Portugal that usage was not very popular. Example: João, Duque de Bragança (Duke of Braganza) and with the last name later becoming a family name like in Duarte de Bragança, showing an affiliation with the Bragança family but without having a formal nobility title.

Several people claim to belong to families that "owned" cities or rivers because of the particle de, but it's often very hard to trace that ancestry back to a noble that actually had a title to the land.

To confuse matters worse, in 1911, after the Republic was established, and during the first Republican census, thousands upon thousands of people simply didn't have a last name, and were given the name of the place where they were born, e.g. "João de Sintra" or "José de Lisboa", without having any relationship to any ancestral noble family who might have had a title to that land.

Gwyneth Llewelyn 19:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ofensive

I find ofensive that it says people give four or five names to their kids as an expression of snobbism. Portuguese people know that's not true, what happens is that many families go by two names (like Pacheco Pereira, or Espirito Santo), so there's nothing wrong with someone being called, lets say, Ana Espirito Santo Pacheco Pereira. I also have five names and I am no snob. 77.54.155.226 (talk) 03:06, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

"Pacheco Pereira" and "Espírito Santo" do not fall in the same category. Pacheco Pereira is a composite surname, resulting from the juxtaposition of two distinct family names sometime in the past, which was then transmitted as pseudo-single family name to the subsequent generations; the same is true for Freitas do Amaral, Cavaco Silva, and Câmara Pereira (just to name a few famous ones). By contrast, Espírito Santo is a single family name, strictu sensu, as it corresponds to a single concept (Holy Spirit): we can go back in time how many centuries we want, but we won't find a generation whose parents were someone with the surname "Espírito" and someone with the surname "Santo"... (but we would find a "Pacheco" and a "Pereira" having a child whose family names were "Pacheco Pereira"); the same is true for such names as Castelo Branco (a toponym), Corte Real, Mil-Homens, Seis-Dedos, Santa Rita, etc. Gazilion (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Note, however, that there is the possibility that a woman whose family name is Castelo and a man whose family name is Branco have a child whose combined family names create the appearance of a single, two-word family name... In the absence of any information about his/her parents, everybody would consider "Castelo Branco" as a single logical unit, and would never call that person "XPTO Branco", but rather "XPTO Castelo Branco" Gazilion (talk) 15:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious claims

When someone's surname was unknown, not verifiable or considered unpronounceable in Portuguese language, his or her surname was usually registered as "da Costa" when living near the sea coast or "da Silva" (from the forest) if lived inland. The surname "dos Santos" (from the saints) was given to orphan children. This explains why these names (da Costa, da Silva, dos Santos) are so common

Are they that common? Where are the numbers? Is there anything at all to "explain"?

— I don't think it has necessarily to do with the name being "not verifiable or considered unpronounceable". For most of Portuguese history there were no such thing as family names that passed from a generation to the next (at least for commoners). Families were then often known or referred to by their location in the village: near the main square (Largo), near a tank (Tanque), near the threshing-floor (Eira), near the well (Poço), near the creek (Ribeiro), on some extreme (Fundo, Cimo), etc. When the locative denoted something that could be owned (Azenha, Moinho, Eira, Tanque, Poço), it could denote ownership by that family (and not just proximity). Gazilion (talk) 16:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[...] and why, although the high degree of miscegenation in Brazil and the Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa and Asia, between Portuguese, African, Asian or local Indigenous people, Portuguese names are so common.

Or maybe the Africans simply didn't use family names! FilipeS (talk) 21:56, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

African slaves were deprived of their own culture by forced christianization. After a couple of generations they were uprooted and forgot their languages and all. So they were just named at the will of their patrons. Indians did not use "names" in the sense that we do, but only nicknames which described their appearance or their deeds. Such nicknames tended to change along their lives.jggouvea (talk) 04:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I added some more information about it. --Tonyjeff (talk) 14:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


The idea that people were given the name "Costa" or "Silva" if no other means of identifying them was readily available is not true with regard to Portugal. It may have been a common practice in Brazil or perhaps other colonies of the mother country, but, if it happened at all, it was very rare in continental Portugal. The Church was careful to enter names and genealogies. It was principally responsible for doing so over a period of centuries. Names of fathers, mothers, grandparents, godparents and witnesses who gave testimony under oath were usually recorded. The incidence of illegitimacy was below the average for Europe (less than 2%) and in those instances the child was usually given the mother's surname. After nearly 30 years of research in Portugal and having reviewed over 20,000 individual entries from 1540 to 1854, I feel qualified to make that statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grandcross (talk • contribs) 02:57, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The particle 'de'

I am not really pretty sure of that. Here in Brazil it is usually considered part of the name (da Silva, for instance), but the particle is not often cited due to a matter of preference. It is similar to von or van in Germanic names. --Tonyjeff (talk) 14:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

In Portugal it is not considered part of the name, and that's for sure... It's just a matter of changing the text to make it clear that that rule only applies in Portugal. Gazilion (talk) 15:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Naming controversy

  • When producing alphabetised lists of Portuguese names, the last family name is chosen as the key. The conjunctives and affixes preceding or following it, such as "da" and "Filho", should not be used.

So what about, for example, Vavá, who seems to have two given names and a Neto suffix? He didn't have any surname...!?!? --necronudist (talk) 21:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Nevertheless, the vast majority of Portuguese language names do have at least one family name. FilipeS (talk) 21:43, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Well... things in Brazil are sort of hazy, nevertheless FilipeS is right, and, furthermore, Vavá's real name Edvaldo Izidio Neto says nothing about is surname, it could be Izidio (Neto meaning granson - but then it should not be capitalized) or it could be Neto (yes, it's a family name). The Ogre (talk) 09:01, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
So Filho, Neto, Sobrinho, Junior, etc aren't ALWAYS suffixes, and there's no way to know if they're suffixes, than asking the person...? Kinda weird... --necronudist (talk) 09:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes... life is weird! The Ogre (talk) 10:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks :) --necronudist (talk) 10:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, maybe Vavá´s surname is Neto which is also an old surname, orginally Italian. Most families use the old form with double -t- (Netto). So, there are family names like Netto de Araújo or Neto de Castro. Or the other side, I never knew someone who use Filho, Junior or Sobrinho as a surname. --Quissamã (talk) 18:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you Quissamã...! This lack of rules in Portuguese naming is really a mess... --necronudist (talk) 08:53, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Sobrinho is an old family name , known at least since the 13th century (one can find a 1285 reference to a Martim Sobrinho living in Minho, a kin of the priest of Orense, Pedro Sobrinho, which may point to a Galician origin for the name). Now, regarding Filho or Júnior, I also never heard of them as surnames. The Ogre (talk) 14:56, 7 April 2008 (UTC)