Villanueva since 1720

Because of our extensive research of our Villanueva family tree courtesy of our persistent and hard working relatives we have traced our roots as far as the 1720’s as descendants of Miguel Villanueva.

Family names were not common in the early days, people would adopt a name either from their parents or from a saint, the latter was more encouraged by the Spanish Friars. This resulted to a 300 year confusion that practically drove Spanish bureaucrats crazy, people without clear family lineages, legitimate births and inheritances were often hard to prove and the clergy worried that Filipinos might be marrying their own cousins or other family members. Which was the usual case when there were not so many people to choose from before.

In 1849, Governor General Narciso Claveria mandated the Filipinos to acquire a family name to begin a process of Civil Register of the entire population. Each head of the family was asked to choose a family name from the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos or the Alphabetical catalogue of surnames, which contained 60,662 surnames, both Spanish and indigenous, that had been collected by parish priests throughout the country. Each town was assigned family names alphabetically. The reason for this move was for efficiency in tax collection, better law enforcement and for church records where we did find the names of our ancestors.

In Ilocos Sur, it was organized in an orderly manner: capital Vigan had “A” surnames for the natives, the mestizos used “F”. Going south, Santa used “B”, Narvacan “C”, Sta. Maria “D”, San Esteban “E”, Santiago “F”, Candon “G”, and so on until Tagudin. Going back to the north: Bantay & San Ildefonso had “P”, Caoayan “Q”, Sta Catalina & San Vicente “R”, Sto. Domingo “T”, Magsingal “U”, Lapog/San Juan “V”, Cabugao “S”, Sinait “Y”. Many families from Sinait later changed “Y” to “I”, so as not to be last alphabetically.

Filipinos who already had surnames like our family name, Villanueva, could keep them for one of these reasons: (1) as long as they can prove that have been using this surname for at least 4 generations and as long as it is not in the list of banned surnames. (2) Others who were already given surnames when they were baptized as Catholics can also keep their family names, (3) the current surname is already included in the list and (4) If you come from a high status in the society and your name belongs to important  families.

I want to believe that our’s was the latter.

Therefore, our family name Villanueva was not acquired from the assigned family names Catálogo alfabético de Apellidos in 1849. Our family name, Villanueva has been used by our ancestors since 1720’s.

We are therefore true blue blooded Villanueva.

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