We change our names too.

I dropped my father's last, honored to now be called by my great grandmother's last.

But her last was my great grandfather's last. But I never knew him. So, to me at least, it's hers and always was.

Some of us keep our last names, to show some kind of good faith to our families that we're not changing our names because we are trying to push them out of our lives, no matter how much they have tried to push us out of their lives, even when they succeeded.

I guess I stayed in the family for the same reason, though going a couple generations back and staying on the patriarchal side. Only because of my love of my great grandmother. Never quite hit it off with the matriarchal side, even though the pat side was evil and vicious people. My great gran mother was not one of the evil ones. She was the eccentric one.

I'm sure she wasn't perfect. What white person can be?

Weird to think that even just having had my name changed is a privilege. One so many of my sisters, brothers and others haven't the means to do so. I don't now. I did once. Funny how things change.

yes, i do know you do.

I'm sure she wasn't perfect. What white person can be?

hey, what person can be? nadie.

thank you for telling part of your story here. i appreciate it. and hear, hear on those Eccentric and Not Evil ones! we must stick together.

Ja ja ja, es dificil exprimir mi gozo encontrar este desarrollo.

Just like you say Hermano: "Back to the article, It's nothing worth stirring the pot, this growing number of "Hispanic" names. Remember Florida, California, Texas, the entire Southwest? These areas have heard the Spanish language spoken for longer than they have the English tongue."

Y también:
"Irony por ustedes. Widja short short short memories."

Apparently in California, Tejas, Nueva Mexico y también en Arizona-- y muy importantemente en Arizona, por eso es el estado donde que los Anglos racistas tratan mas duramente atacar los Latinos-- los nombres mas comunes para niños y niñas son nombres de la gente.

And the Anglos have short memories in indeed, porque this wonderful news has been more than 150 years in coming, amigo, ever since the Anglos humiliated the Chicano people en masse in the Mexican War in 1848, violated the treaties that demanded respect for our people and our rights to use español for all places, ethnic cleansed us from our homes-- then humiliated other Latino peoples in the dozens of invasiones que los Anglos then perpetrated in the decades after 1848.

It's a reminder that the valor de los niños heroes, ha continuado brillar con fuerza en las corazones de la gente.

To any Anglos lurking here-- dat's right, amigos, after almost 160 years of your occupation and humiliation of our people in the Southwest following Polk's invasion, after all the evictions and ignoring the treaties, shunning our culture, rear-guard actions and puttin' up walls, we are again becoming the majority in the lands you decided to dispossess us from. And you are never, ever gonna stop it, so don't even try it.

And no, mis amigos Anglos, we're not lookin' for payback, just respect. Un montón de respeto, en lugar del desprecio que nos han mostrado desde generaciones! It means we co-exist here, but it means you Anglos respect us, nuestros derechos y nuestra cultura just as you've forced us to pay homage to yours in years past. The people you thought you'd subjugated and conquered, are now once again the rulers of our own destinies here and the destinies de estas tierras. So forget about all your fences, all your Minutemen and all your virulent hatred, vamos a reir en sus rostros y parar sus ataques. We're not being pushed around anymore.

And BTW, we Latinos ain't the illegals here, my Anglo homies. We were here for centuries antes de que ustedes decidieron imponer "la frontera" en 1848. We have a right to be here, raise our families here and celebrate our culture here. We are happy for you to join us, but never pretend that you rule over us, ever again.

Viva.

Somehow, I was shocked to see that Rivera did not make the cut. I was betting on that one. And, yes it is true that here in Latin America everyone has two surnames and husbands and wives have completely different surnames unless they happen to be cousins. The kids have the same name, which is the combo of the paternal and maternal grandfather's names. The mother passes on her paternal name, not her maternal name.

ah. now look at that. damn.

We change our names too.

I chose my mother's maiden name, because - like Nezua - my legal father saw me as an enemy. He wasn't adoptive, I was born while he was married to my mother. It wasn't until later I (gratefully) learned that he was not my biological father. He refused to respect who I was, and insisted on clinging to who he thought I should be, described what I was doing as "suicide."

Anyway, picking the right last name was hard - I had my biological father's name, my mother's maiden name, some other name that I might pick and like (and I had several). I decided to honor my mother's name because I hated one father and didn't know the other.

Anyway, this idea of a "struggle" over surnames strikes me as being little more than a reason to talk about how the migrating latin@s are invading and ultimately threatening the dominant culture, commentary that I find very anti-American - not that any panicmongering conservative will agree with me.

that's how i see it, lisa. you put it well.

thanks for sharing your experience.

Just wanted to add that [cue mariachi section]is one of my favorite stage directions. Thanks. Oddly, Nixon's favorite music was Mariachi, so no one can claim he was completely without sensitivity. AYIIIII!

Tomorrow I am "going home" to San Antonio. So grateful to know who I am and where I came from. I have several cousins to show me the ancestral Spanish land grant where the family's farms and ranches were and the Mission where lie the graves of those who came before me. I am the descendant of Vaqueros. Real cowboys... not the John Wayne kind.

When I become a legally married woman in California next month, (necessary because California does not recognize Common-Law marriage) I will keep my own name. I recently checked with Social Security and a married woman is no longer required to file taxes under her husband's name or change it on her SS card.

Welcome to the 21st century!

I'm a Johnson, I have a sister who is a Williams, and a latina step-sister who traded in Garcia for Smith. The way I see it us women of color are undermining and infiltrating those Anglo names. Take that Lou Dobbs!

Almost all the families on my rez have white names, French to be precise, because the French couldn't pronounce our names and gave us Christianized names for census purposes. Many are first names, when the families got larger it was easier to keep track by using the patriarch's first name for the children and grandchildren's last name. So we have the Francis family and the Nicholas family and the Paul family and the Bernard family and my family's name was Joe up until the turn of the century (1900 not 2000) when they took the name of the Indian agent, for once we had a fair one, so we honored him. Other names are mispronounced versions of French, they couldn't pronounce our names and we couldn't pronounce the ones they gave us, so you have the Sappiers (St Pierre) and the Sabbatus' (St Jean Baptiste) and the Atwins (Etienne).

Donna's comments are educational for me, but also sad. The lost names that really belonged to the people on the reservation {and that is a euphemism for what?} would have held so much more for the named.

Thanks, Donna, I also find your comment enlightening. I always wondered why many native Americans have surnames like John. Census records are full of phonetic misspellings of even common Anglo names. It's too bad those who felt the need to put the names of native people in writing didn't just do their best with the spellings rather than saddle them with the names of their oppressors. Since native history was passed down by spoken word anyway, at least the names would have persisted in our written records in much the same way they would have in the oral tradition.

Thanks, Donna. Yeah...so many stories like this. I have a real thing about names and the whole whitewash process. As I've made clear, and surely has a lot to do with my own adoption, where I almost "lost" my given (ethnic) name for a while.

My great great grandmother on the maternal side came here on a boat from Russia, her name was changed at Ellis Island, and nobody knows the real last name anymore. That kind of thing really burns me up.

I loved your story, its fascinating. How the names morphed like that.

That sounds like my husband's family, we are Johnson's now, but his great grandfather was from Sweden and had the name Benkman (not sure of the exact spelling) and he and his brother decided they wanted to sound more American so took the more common Johnson name instead. We were talking about the name change amongst ourselves and just didn't get it, it's not like Benkman is really all that strange or hard to pronounce, it would be nice to go back in time and find out what they were really thinking when they changed the name.

On the reservation there are more people with Maliseet names now, first names anyway, so it's making a comeback.