What's in a name?

Did you ever think that just because you had a Hispanic surname, one of your ancestors must have been from Spain? But you look around, and there's nothing mestizo about your relatives.

I'm a Hernandez. Since "Hernandez" means son of Hernando, and I always thought there was a guy named Hernando that linked all the Hernandez's in Mexico, Spain, and Philippines together. In actuality, my last name most likely was arbitrarily assigned from a torn off page of a book.

The Spanish were having hard time with taxation as many of the newly-Catholicized Filipinos took Catholic symbols as surnames creating an abundance of Santos' and de la Cruz's with no appropriate relation. Filipinos also went P.Diddy with the names as a means of tax evasion. In 1849, the Catalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos was produced to help the Spaniards with their bookkeeping.

From the book, each Filipino family was assigned a surname, in an apparently systematic process. There's debate if each province actually received the whole book if not sections. Some towns have historic last names all beginning with the same letter. It appeared all the northern provinces like in Ilocos and Cagayan got surnames from A to C while surnames from W to Z went to Southern Mindanao.

Now these surnames like Gregorio, Fernandez, Perez, etc. indicate these families come from Spanish conquered lands. There are remote areas where indigenous names like Macapagal, Pacquiao, & Samiley, Ople have survived the westernization. Apparently as well, some indigenous names were are part of the catalog of names. It's also here to note that the Muslim influence has brought in some religious last names of Islam similarly to when Spain brought Christianity.

Chinese Filipinos

Nowadays, one syllable last names like Lim, Tan, & Sy aren't so bad for business. Early merchants / future Chinese Filipinos fit in with their multiple syllabic counterparts by taking on names of a respectful elder or ancestor and adding the suffix -co or -son. -Co was a respectful title; I would compare it to the use of "Kuya". (I don't know if I'm correct.) But the triple-syllable last name like in Yujico & Cotangco is something distinctly Chinese Filipino. Also Chinese-derived, Dizon, Lacson, Ayson are examples of the two syllable surnames ending in -son or -zon which have strong prevalence in Pampanga.

Now indigenously, second names used to be taken from children. Here is Berto father of Pito, and such and such. The traditional naming standard currently is for the children to take on the mother's surname as the middle name.

Sources

• Catalog of Filipino Names - bibingka.com
• Philippines Surnmaes FAQ - WorldGenWeb Project
• surname: The Philippines - Answers.com