My family name

[mhervas]

I don't consider my family name, Hervàs, very common. In my country, Catalunya, there are 1500 people with my family name. The most common here is Garcia, with 170.000 people. I know all this because I've just look for it in http://www.idescat.cat. My name doesn't tell where I come from; it's the name of a village in Extremadura, is Spain, but my family does'nt come from there...

[LC328083]

Hello, my name is Miguel Casas and I come from Spain. Without looking at any official statistics, we can say the most popular and common names are Jose, Antonio,
Paco, Miguel for men and Maria, Carmen, for women.
My family name, Casas (which in english means houses), is not very common in the area of the country where I was born, Granada, in Andalucia, the most southern region in Spain.
I think the region where you can find more people with the same family name as mine is Catalonia. The reason why there are few of Casas spread over other areas is the resettlements
that followed the conquests made by the Catholic in the Middle Age.
I read my heraldry time ago, and it was told how that family name came to Andalucia. After the conquest of the City of Sevilla in the twelve century, the
catholic king Fernando 3rd "El Santo", gave lands for free to anyone who came in order to repopulate the area. One of the new inhabitants, was "Marques de Casals", who came
from Catalonia. My family name, Casas, it is supposed to be the evolution of Casals.
According to the said above, I would not say my family name tells very much about my family. When I introduce myself to anyone from another country, he will
know I am from Spain by my first name, Miguel, which is well known to be very common in Spain. I don't know what he would guess about my origin if I introduced myself
as Mr. Casas.
Therefore, my family name does not refer to any profession, but if my first name were Armando ( can be translated to english as .. building ..), the full name
could make think I am a bricklayer .. Building Houses :-) ..

Moreover names in Spain, there are some that, for some reasons, became very popular in the middle eighties, and a lot of children were given those names when they were born.
They can't be thought as spanish names. They are imported from other countries in northern Europe: Holland, Germany, England, France, etc ...
Among the names that became trendy we can find: Vannessa, Jennifer, Jessica, Jonathan, Christian ...
Some years after, the trend was to make the name of someone famous become part of the name of the child .. So, there are some fortunate guys whose full names
are something like .... "Kevin Costner de Jesus" .. :O) ...

Therefore, you have to be ready to hear something like that when you are introduced to someone with a name like that and don't get shocked. By the way, when you
meet someone for the first time in Spain, you usually give your first name and even your short or your knickname if it is a friendly situation. For business,
job interviews, etc .. it is more formal to give your first name and surname, without anykind of short, knicknames, but it is not very usual to use a title
of Mr, Mrs. .. It was years ago. I remember we named the teachers in primary and highschool by the title and first name.

And as far as to show affection is concerned, you can name your partner using words like ... "cariño, bombón, churri" :-) .. Also, to call children, first names can used in
their diminutive forms .. e.g. Miguelito, Miguelillo, are diminutive for Miguel ..

[edu.mar]

Hello!!, my name is Eduardo Martinez, and I´m from Asturias.
1.The most common names from this area may be Maria, Covadonga, Carmen, for women, and Jose, Carlos, Francisco, etc for me.
2.I haven´t any experince in this kind of things, so my family name doesn´t say anything about where we from, at least I think that, may be that we´re Spanish only.
3.Martínez comes of Martín, but this is ethimology only.
4.My name doesn´t refer to anything only is my name.
5.I don´t know if in Spain we´ve popular names from another countries, I´m sure there´re names, but I don´t know now anyone.
6.The real thing is that I like to use the name of everybody, if it´s the first time that I´m going to meet someone, I´say my name, and I hope this someone will tell the name as well.
7.In formal situations people talk with surnames and the title, but normal people or normal situation, I think anyone talks only with the name, or nickname.
8.Yes!, jejeje, names like churri, guapa, etc....

Bufff, I did the exercise very quickly, so sorry for the mistakes!!

[Vocavulvari]

Same as the first post from user mhervas, my family name also comes from Extremadura but my family is not from there. However, I think that trying to find the family roots by following this kind of clues has no sense today, since we are too many people moving ourselves from one place to another. Of course, somebody in my family may have born in Extremadura, probably a couple of centuries far, but does it matter to me?

[Diezelcuaz]

It is not easy to find out a lot of information about the name Elcuaz. It comes from Navarra. The origin about this name arrives until 1700 approximately. It is not a very common name, so it is very difficult to find someone named Elcuaz, if you meet one it will be probably a member of my family. I have to spell it very often in order to avoid error transcriptions.

My mother was born in Villafranca de Navarra. When she was a child, her parents moved to Salamanca. Some members of the family Elcuaz live in Villafranca and my direct family and cousins live in Salamanca.

I had never searched the name in Internet but yesterday I did and I found some Elcuaz in Bolivia too.

In addition, I could see some pictures that my cousin took in some of his marvellous travels around the world: Mongolia, Canada, Island, etc. Moreover, there are some references to my brother, who has written some books.