At first, surnames applied only to one person and not to the whole family. After a few generations, these names became hereditary and were used from father to son.

Surnames were first used by the nobility and wealthy land owners. Later the custom was followed by merchants and townspeople and eventually by the rural population. This process took two or three centuries. In Portugal the name system was well established by the 1100s. The naming customs of Brazil were the same as those in Portugal.

It is not possible to determine the exact year or even the century when a particular family name was taken. By the end of the 13th century many families determined to retain the patronymic without continuing to change the name from generation to generation. Thus, the hereditary sobrenomes (surnames) were in use by the time of the discovery of the New World.

In Brazil many surnames of Portuguese origin were given to the native Indians and Negro children when the priests baptized them. Others were simply baptized João, José, Maria, and so forth, and later descendants obtained a surname.

Another distinctive practice of the Portuguese naming system was the double and compound surnames. The person would be known by his maternal and paternal surnames. Compound surnames (sobrenomes compostos) can be found with or without a preposition (de, do, da, d’). Examples are Maria Ferreira de Castilhos, José João Costa Silva, and Francisco Rosa e Silva. Generally the last surname came from the father.

While most present-day names are taken from parents’ surnames, historically the surnames might be those of the more prominent family and even those from grandparents. During the first half of the 1800s a male child often took the surname of his father, while a female child took the surname of her mother.

In many cases a surname was arbitrarily adopted. Family grudges, popular surnames, names related to a location, the desire to avoid undesirable family connections, or the desire to express appreciation or sympathy to someone resulted in changes of a surname. These changes create serious difficulties for genealogists.

Historically, before the last 150 years, women did not attach their husband’s surname. Now a women who married a Martins would attach the married surname (sobrenome de casado) de Martins to her first single (paternal) surname (sobrenome de solteira). And when she was widowed she would become Viúva (widow) de Martins. In Brazil “de” was used with surnames as a preposition (of or from) and not as an indicator of nobility.

In Brazil, until recently the surname was seldom passed on to the children in a way that it is helpful to link families. Last names also varied from one record to another. Often a person’s full name had a half dozen different variations. This is especially true for women. A man could be Joaquim da Silva Paranhos in one record and Joaquim José Paranhos, Joaquim José da Silva, and Joaquim José da Silva Paranhos in other documents. A woman could be listed variously as Maria Isabel da Silva, Maria da Silva Conceição, Maria Isabel, or Maria da Conceição da Silva. In addition, the name Conceição could be replaced by Encarnação, and an additional name Livramento or das Dores might be added, depending on the saint popular with the family or individual or on the desire of the recorder.

It is therefore sometimes necessary to give up the idea that the father’s last name is always a certain name. Instead, you might need to note all persons with the same first name to learn the variations within the records.

Another difficulty may be met in the transition of the name of a person from when he or she was enslaved to when he or she became a free person. For example a slave named Isabel Parda could become Maria Isabel da Costa after becoming free. This can be one of the first challenges in researching the genealogy of slave families in Brazil.

Additional information on names in Brazil can be found in: