Searching for Spanish ancestors can sometimes be extremely frustrating and at other times incredibly easy. The first thing to know is that Spaniards have two surnames. The first surname is the FIRST surname of the father and the second surname is the FIRST surname of the mother.  Secondly, Spanish women do not take the surname of their husbands.

 

In the United States, especially with men, the second surname became the American “middle” name.  It was not as common with women because they became known by their husband’s surname.  As an example, Jose Maria Alonso Sola became Jose Sola Alonso which morphed into Joe Alonzo.  However, there are also cases where the family used the second surname as the family name. For example, Juan de Dios RIVERA Casado married Trinidad RIVERA Medina.  Their children used the surname Casado which was their paternal grandmother’s surname. In other cases, people borrowed names or used fictitious names. Where the latter has been identified, the index has been updated with changes shown in red. If you wish to review the original, refer to the corresponding manifest link in the Ship Index.

 

The other difficulty in searching is the result of surnames morphing into something different, because a non-Spanish speaker was writing Spanish surnames for people who did not read or write.