I AM CONFUSED AS TO THE USE OF SURNAMES. I HAVE SOMEONE NAMED GERTRUDIS GONZALES DE PLACENCIA. WHICH NAME IS HER FATHERS AND WHICH NAME IS HER MOTHERS? WHAT DOES "DE" SIGNIFY? AFTER SHE MARRIES IS THEIR A CHANGE? WHEN LISTED IN AN ALPHABETICAL INDEX HOW IS SHE LISTED AS? DOES SHE GO UNDER G FOR GONZALES OR DOES SHE GO UNDER "DE" OR IS SHE UNDER P FOR PLACENCIA? WHAT IF SHE REMARRIES? THANK YOU.
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When listed in an alphabetical index, this person should go under G for González. For Spanish surnames you always list under the first surname. However, you usually ignore the words DE (OF), DE LOS and DE LA (OF THE), so a "de la Garza" shoud go under G and a "de Espinosa" should go under E. Other languages also use the preposition OF or an equivalent: DiCaprio, DiMarco (Italian), Dubois, Dumont, Dupont(French).
"González de Placencia" should be her maiden name. It is hard to know if she got the "González" from the father and the "de Placencia" from the mother, or if "González de Placencia" is a single surname that she got from her father.
Women keep their maiden surnames regardless of how many times they marry although...
When a woman marries, she usually adds to her name the word "de" followed by the first surname of the husband, for example: "Jacqueline Kennedy" would have been "Jaqueline Bouvier de Kennedy". When the husband dies, she changes it to "viuda de..." (widow of):
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Once you start colonial research (XVII-XVIII centuries) you will notice it's common to see these compound names
the subject itself can get complicated. Spaniards had fun with surnames, one reason could be two families
were important so they compounded their names so their descendants could keep both and not lose the maternal
name. Note also that until the Borbon Reforms there was no rule on what name to take, if a male was named
after his maternal grandfather who could take his maternal last name and ignore his father's name all his life.
My paternal line is MENDEZ DE TORRES father to son and so on since Diego Mendez de Torres in 17th century in
Michoacan. My maternal line is CAMINO TRASGALLO, again father to son and eventually to daughter (my mother).
This practice became less important after the independence of Mexico occurred where it was an old way of thinking.
Many people shortened their names so let's say GIL DE HOYOS, one son chose to keep GIL the other son became
DE HOYOS. At
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surnames