Silva is the most popular nickname in Portugal and Brazil. In Europe in the Middle Ages there was only the proper name, followed by a characteristic of the person who carried it. Portuguese stopped giving different surnames in the interests of the Catholic Church.
The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) this Tuesday, for the first time, the list of the most popular nicknames in Brazil.
Of the approximately 200,000 nicknames released, Silva leads the records, with around 34 million Brazilians — 16.76% of the population. Then comes Santoswith 21.4 million records (10.4%).
And, interestingly, the two most popular surnames in Brazil are the same two that lead the ranking in Portugal, according to data from the Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado (IRN), released in February of this year.
The Silva of Brazil are mainly concentrated in the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco. According to IBGE data, 35.75% of the population of Alagoas has this surname. In Pernambuco, it is 34.23%. The Brazilian municipality with the highest number of Silva is Belém de Maria, in Pernambuco, where the nickname is used by 63.90% of people.
Many of 20 most popular nicknames in Brazil They are also very popular in Portugal:
- Silva: 34.030.104
- Santos: 21.367.475
- Oliveira: 11.708.947
- Souza: 9.197.158
- Pereira: 6.888.212
- Ferreira: 6.226.228
- Lima: 6.094.630
- Alves: 5.756.825
- Rodrigues: 5.428.540
- Costa: 4.861.083
- Sousa: 4.797.390
- Gomes: 4.046.634
- Birth: 3,609,232
- Araújo: 3,460,940
- Ribeiro: 3.127.425
- Almeida: 3,069,183
- Jesus: 2.859.490
- Barbosa: 2.738.119
- Soares: 2,615,284
- Carvalho: 2.599.978
Silva’s origins
The nickname has a controversial origin. Or at least that’s what the Dictionary of Brazilian Families, by Carlos Eduardo Barata and António Henrique da Cunha Bueno, says.
According to the publication, Silva’s origins dates back to Roman timesin which it was used to designate people from forest regions. Derived from Latin, silva means “jungle” or “forest”.
According to IBGE, the nickname disappeared with the fall of the Roman Empire and resurfaced around the 11th century, in the Iberian Peninsula. Silva became extremely popular in colonial Brazil with the Portuguese who came to the country and, in search of anonymity, adopted the nickname. Furthermore, many enslaved people received this nickname from their owners, usually with the preposition “da”, as an indication of ownership.
Silva is quite common in most Portuguese-speaking countries and is also found in Spain and Italy, although on a smaller scale.
From nicknames to nicknames
Nicknames basically arose from the need to differentiate people.
There are indigenous peoples, such as the Bororo, in which the genealogical denomination occurs only through the maternal line, unlike the predominance of the paternal line that prevailed on these two continents. In the early Middle Ages, In Europe, people only had their first name, often followed by a qualifier associated with a physical characteristic or occupationexplains Rosana Coelho de Alvarenga e Melo to the BBC.
It was only between the 11th and 13th centuries that surnames began to take hold. Places of origin and patronymics (derived from the father’s name) also served as a basis.
This is how nicknames arose, in several languages, such as Smith or Schmidt (blacksmith), Taylor (tailor), Baker (baker), Müller (miller), Blanco (white), Long (tall) or Roux (redhead).
In patronymics in Portuguese, “es” indicates descentas in Gonçalves (“son of Gonçalo”). In Spanish, it’s the same: Martínez means “son of Martín”. In English, Johnson is “son of John”. In Russian, Ivanov is “son of Ivan”. The prefixes “ibn” and “ben”, from Arabic, and “Mac” or “Mc”, from Scottish Gaelic and Irish, have the same function.
“The patronymic was a way of identifying kinship in societies in which families were organized into clans or lineages”, explains Alvarenga and Melo. “Over time, many of these names became permanent nicknames, even when the original meaning was no longer considered.”
Alan Borges, vice-president of the Association of Natural Persons Registrars of Rio de Janeiro (Arpen-RJ), highlights that custom “rules” in the attribution of names.
“Each country has its own traditions, and they don’t always follow logic,” says Borges. These are just some of the oldest ways of giving nicknames.
Portuguese stopped giving different surnames in the interests of the Church
Alvarenga e Melo recalls that even heredity — something central in the definition of surnames today — was not a rule.
“A man named João Ferreira could have a son Pedro da Silva, for example. Women often received nicknames of devotion, such as De Jesus or Da Anunciação”, he says.
In the 17th century, in Portugal, brothers with different surnames were almost the rule. The heir son, generally the firstborn, received his father’s surname. According to an article by Nuno Gonçalo Monteiro, researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, in 83% In marriages with two or more children, the parents chose different surnames for each one.
“At least the daughters used different nicknames from the sons, almost invariably. They would get them from their mother, a grandmother… there was no fixed rule”, wrote the investigator.
In parallel with this detachment from heredity, began to emerge among the elite the transmission of the names of the father and mother to the children. Aristocratic, bourgeois and property-owning families had a greater interest in preserving property rights and family identity.
At the height of the Inquisition, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the emergence of double surnames facilitated the investigation of the ancestors of someone suspected of being “impure” from a Catholic perspective — that is, who had Jews or Muslims in the family. Based on baptism records and the registration of believers, the Catholic Church played an important role in the standardization and dissemination of surnames.
Passing on two names, instead of just one, was a way of reinforcing the Church’s control over people, Spanish genealogist Antonio Alfaro de Prato explained to BBC News Mundo. In other words, the combination of the father’s and mother’s surnames had nothing to do with the search for a more egalitarian society between genders.
Furthermore, carrying one’s mother’s surname made it easier to identify someone in everyday life, due to the limited variety of names in the Spanish language. “So, the son of Juan de Cadaval and Maria de Gusman would be called José de Cadaval y Gusman”, explains Cerqueira.
Just like that, with his father’s surname before his mother’s. As Portugal and Spain formed a single kingdom for 60 years (1580–1640), many of these customs spread throughout the Peninsula and were consolidated until the 19th century, when the situation changed completely. From the 18th century onwards, the use of hereditary surnames for all children became widespread.
“The first surnames used were those of the house, in principle those of the father, and only later were those of the mother added”, says the article by Nuno Gonçalo Monteiro.
Why women usually adopt their husband’s surname
According to an article by Cambridge University historian Amy Erickson, who specializes in gender economics and the ancient social structures of England, it was there that the habit of women taking their husband’s name emerged. Was a question of ownership.
In the 14th century, English lawyers created a rule according to which, when a woman got married, with a few exceptions, all her property became her husband’s. To symbolize the agreement, she adopted his nickname.
“For 500 years, England was the only European country in which husbands gained almost complete control over their wives’ assets and where women exchanged their given surname for their husband’s when they married,” explains Erickson.
The English habit spreadover time, by other European patriarchal societies and, from there, to the colonies.
