My "hispanic" family name
 

Hello. I am a Filipino. I have always believe that my family name is a spanish. When i was a kid when i learned that Magistrado means magistrate. My father also told me that his maternal great grand father was a spanish friar named Molinero who was assigned to the Philippines from Toledo, Spain. I don't know how our family name became Magistrado.

Now that I am learning spanish, i tried to search through the web for names of persons from Spain and its former colonies in with the family name Magistrado but I can not find any.

I would like to ask anybody here who is from a hispanic country, is the name Magistrado used as a family name?

Thank you.

I am not a native of a Spanish speaking country but lived in one for several years.

In all my time in Chile I don´t recall meeting anyone with the last name Magistrado. Also doing a search in google for "apellido Magistrado" came up with few results but I did find a page that may be useful that claims that the last name is from Italy. I have not verified the authenticity of the site but here it is(it´s in Spanish): http://www.heraldrysinstitute.com/co...40994/lang/es/

I have never heard "Magistrado" as a last name, but I just met someone whose family name is "Fiscal", and it isn't common either, so I guess there will be some similar names in a few Spanish speaking countries. :)

Arturo Pérez Reverte's character "Capitán Alatriste" , has a name that shows very clear Hispanic resonances; however the name Alatriste does not exist in Spain. The writer and member of the Real academia española de la lengua ,explains that he found the name in Mexico, where he meet for the first time an editor named Alatriste. The writer considered that such name had a good sound, it was evocative and poetic, and when he returned to Spain tried unsuccessfully to find where was the origin place of it. Nevertheless he discovered that there were some people in Spain named "Alatristain", an originally Basque name which probably could have been transformed once their owners moved to America.
Something similar could have happened with the name Magistrado, it could have been the evolution of some originally Spanish names such as Manjón, Majado, Megido… There is still a much more simpler possibility, as during the times of the Spanish control over the archipelago, the inhabitants of the Philippines were allowed to chose any Christian Spanish name to make easier their integration in our culture. In spite of not have been used as a family name in Spain, the word Magistrado is perfectly correct in Spanish, it could have been accepted as a family name without problems.

Thank you. That was very informative.


A curious thing about the surnames of Filipinos is that one can identify from which province or municipality a person originates basing on the first letter of his/her surname.
During the colonial period the natives of the Philippines were given surnames the first letter of which is the same for persons residing in the same municipality.

In the municipality of Daraga, Province of Albay, one will find surnames like Manzanilla, Marcellana, Manzanades, Malto, Mirandilla, which all starts with the letter M. In the neighboring own of Camalig, the surnames starts with letter N like Nocillado, Necerio, Nimo, Nato, Nator, Nuyda etc.

Was this also done in latin america during the colonial period?

México and Filipinas was the same country for about 300 year. The Viceroyalty of New Spain was constituid for Cuba, Puerto Rico Florida, Mexico, Filipinas, Guam, Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Washington, etc. The Capital was Mexico City.

The next pic was the map of New Spain:
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virrei...:New_Spain.svg

I had never know about that last name, but, yes is a spanish word. Maybe someone was a magistrate and take that last name, its a common form to make lastnames.

In fact most of the people who colonized Filipinas wasn´t Spanish People, was people from the actual México, filipinos people and mexican people has a lot in common, the south part of México where Nao de China (ship) departed, look like asian people from the people who came from the Capitania de Filipinas.