Joseph:

I don't think that Padrinos were necessarily blood relatives.  I know 
that in my family, neither of my parents' padrinos are close 
relatives.  This is purely based on anecdotal evidence, but I think 
padrinos were often childhood friends, with which the parents had a 
close comeraderie or even respected members of the community (since 
traditionally, these would take in the child should he or she be 
orphaned, etc. and one would want the child to be well raised).

Given the prevelance of clusters of names (due to surnames often 
being assigned to indigenous people, etc.) it is likely that two 
(unrelated) friends in a rancho would have the same surname.

--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Puentes <makas@n...> wrote:
> 
> I know that in most cases the padrinos were members of the family. 
But 
> other than showing this is via examination of the records how do we 
> know? Were there many examples of non blood relatives being the 
> Padrinos? I guess I'm more interested in if  anyone has ever 
witnessed a 
> padrino with the same surname of one of the parents actually being 
a non 
> blood relative. Has anyone ever seen this?
> 
> Where can I go to read more information on how our relatives picked 
> Padrinos and the likely hood that they were blood relatives of some 
degree?
> 
> thanks again you guys are great,
> 
> joseph