I'm trying to find out who my ancestors are....where my last name "favela" came from...any help?

Question

By the way, i know what a "favela" is in brazil....but i doubt that's where the last name originated.

Answer 1

This most interesting surname is of Portuguese origin, and derives from three possible interpretations, two French and the other Italian. It may be cognate with the Old French word "fauve", dusky, dark-skinned, which was a nickname applied to someone with a dusky complexion; or it may have been a nickname for a quick-witted person, from the Old French "favel", story, tale, the name borne by a cunning horse in a popular medieval cycle of beast tales. Finally, it may also be cognate with the Italian "favilla", spark, which was used as a nickname for a choleric person, one who was quick to anger. The surname is first recorded in the Church Registers of Portugal in the early 15th Century (see below). The first recorded namebearer may be the same Joao Favella, whose wife Beatriz gave birth to a son Joao, in 1472, at Funchal-Madeira, Funchal, in Portugal. His children Bartholomew and Catharina were born at Funchal-Maderira also, in 1474 and 1476, respectively. In England the name is also found as Favell, and one of these families in Kirby Hall, Catterick, Yorkshire, were granted a Coat of Arms in 1666, which depicts a chevron between three silver escallops on a black shield, with the Motto "En Dieu ma foi" (My faith is in God). The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Joao Favella, which was dated 1430, baptised at Funchal-Madeira, Funchal in Portugal, during the reign of King John the Great, 1383 - 1433. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

Answer 2

Rootsweb.com has family files, free, and I found 132 entries for the name. Many have no location, but I found some with Mexico, and one or two with Madeira.
Finding your OWN lineage, you need to work back to whoever was the "immigrant" ancestor, and focus on those records to learn his/her place of birth. If Mexico, rootsweb also sponsors mailing lists for almost all countries in the world. This helps you network with people researching in one locality, and find exactly what records are out there.
Many people are not interested in more than historical background on a surname. Because people migrated so much, this can be misleading, when matching it to your own personal history. It is also possible that once you get back a few generations, you can run into an adoption, and find that the ancestor had a different last name at birth.

Answer 3

Cortéz is most likely a variant of Cortés, a Spanish surname which goes back to the middle ages. Not everyone with the surname Cortés or Cortéz is related. It comes from cortés, the Spanish word for courteous. This is the most generally accepted history of Cortéz. While the surname originated in Spain and Spaniards in the middle ages were white that does not reflect on the race or ethnicity of your boyfriend. In our modern world we have a lot of non-caucasians with surnames that originated in European countries. It is NOT a Mexican surname although the Spaniard who conquered Mexico was named Cortés. On the other hand the great majority of Mexicans have Spanish surnames, as is also the case of most countries in Central and South America and the Phillipines. Emilio Estévez and Cameron Díaz have Spanish surnames and they're white. Sammy Sosa has a Spanish surname and he's black. Bolivian president Evo Morales has a Spanish surname and he is South American Indian (Amerind).

Answer 4

out of the 120 favelas on the 1930 census... 98 of them were in california and New mexico, with Mexico listed as their birthplace. hope this helps

Answer 5

Find out as much information as you can about your relatives then do a little genealogical research. The best place to start is the LDS records. Here's link: http://www.familysearch.org/

Answer 6

Here is a place where they have information and also if it was from brazil it's orgin could Spanish or poutegese.