Why do Phillipino's have spanish last names????

Question

I know it had something to do with a war between Japan and Spain, but I need more information than that. Why the Spanish last names - anyone? They didn't teach us World History in Highschool.

Answer 1

For the first several hundred years of Spanish rule, most Filipino surnames were either indigenous (e.g., Macapagal) or the names of Saints or other Catholic symbols (San Jose, de la Cruz, de los Reyes, etc.). Frequently, members of the same family did not have the same "surname" which drove Spanish officials crazy since they were trying to keep the tax rolls straight.

So in 1849, under Governor General Narciso Claveria, they issued a huge "Alphabetical Catalogue of Surnames" (Catalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos -- republished by the National Archives in 1973), which is just page after page of names, some Spanish, some Filipino, compiled by friars and bureaucrats from various sources. In theory, every Filipino was supposed to pick a name from this approved list, and all members of the same family were supposed to have the same surname and stick to it.

In practice, implementation was very uneven. In some provinces, e.g. Albay, the governor apparently tore out pages from the Catalogue and sent them to individual towns. Hence, almost everyone in the town had names beginning with the same letter ("B" in Tiwi, "R" in Oas, etc.) In other provinces, it was much more random. A lot of people kept old surnames (including "de los Santos" and the like) even though the decree supposedly forbade this. However, most Filipinos have family names which date back only to 1849 and to the "Catalogue" issued by Claveria.

Most of the Filipino-Chinese surnames date from the 19th century and later when most Chinese immigrants came to the Philippines. Names ending with "-go" or "-co" or "-son" often reflect contractions of generic terms or honorifics.

For more details on the Claveria decree, read the introduction to the 1973 edition of the _Catalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos_. See Edgar Wickberg, _The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850-1898_ for the origin of Filipino-Chinese surnames.

Answer 2

Spanish Family Names

Answer 3

There was a point in history when the Spanish changed the last names of all the Filipinos to a Spanish name. My history is a bit fuzzy, so I can't remember when.

Answer 4

the reason is something like this:

to begin with the "las islas Filipinas" is under spanish rules of more than 300 hundred years (count that...)

during the time that the entire philippines is under the spanish rules...this general guy made an order to SPANISH-ized all the natives last names for better communication of sorts. it has been an order so now majoriy has its own spanish last names.

also i beleived that the real local lastnames during those ancient times is hard for the foreign spanish people to pronounce so it can be made easier by making it like their own.so the foreigns list out spanish last names which the people cam now used...

now you got PREZ, DELACRUZ(most common) valderrama, santos, rodriguez, ayala, zobel, francisco, any many many other else...

also if you lived in northern part your lastname would be like starting with letter A so if you name starts with like R it means that you lived somewhere in the middle philippines.

well thats it i hope somehow it answers your inquiry,

Answer 5

It's an old Spanish colony.

Answer 6

It is because the Spaniards gave the Filipino people Spanish names.. In fact, on Nov. 21, 1849, Spanish Governor General Claveria ordered all Filipino families to select a surname from a catalog sent to all the provinces in the country listed from A - Z [obvious!.. -_- ]

Answer 7

For the best answers, search on this site https://shorturl.im/avsKc

Trinidad is a Spanish last name that is sometimes found in the Philippines, but not everyone with that name is Filipino. Many are also from Guam, Figi and many of the other island chains in the Pacific.

Answer 8

The Phillipines was once a Spanish colony -- it was one for hundreds of years before the US won it in the Spanish-American war around the turn of the century. It's named after a Spanish King Phillip.

Answer 9

Hispanic Surnames

Answer 10

Since the 1500s, the Phillippines was a Spanish colony. The Spanish lost it in the Spanish American War in 1898. Their cultural and linguistic traditions took deep root there -- also their names.

Answer 11

Phillippines is once a Spanish territory. And the Filipino language contain many Spanish words.