Last Name Valerio Research Paper

Origen of the last names Trinidad and Valerio

I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and our tradition when it comes to last names differs from the one in the United States. In the Dominican tradition, each person carries two last names, but only the first last name of each parent would be transferred to a child. The first last name is acquired through the fraternal side, while the second last name comes from the maternal side. So my future children would carry their father’s first last name as their first last name, and then my first last name as their second.

When people often hear my first last name Trinidad, they either assume that I come from the country Trinidad and Tobago or that it is my second name. Trinidad is my fraternal

last name, and until recent years all that my family and I knew about it was that it came from Spanish heritage and that it had some sort of religious meaning within the Catholic Church. But on 2011 a big legal dispute broke concerning a territory on the eastern side of the Dominican Republic involving the Trinidad family. There were allegations that a large piece of land located in a famous tourist part, in fact, belonged to the Trinidad Family. Since the Dominican Republic is a small island with a relatively small population, it was easy for the government to narrow their search for the people that should be participants of the lawsuit. During this process, my family and I got to know about the history of our last name and our ancestors.
The last name Trinidad derives from the Spanish word “trinity” which refers to the religious term the Holy Trinity: Son, Father and the Holy Spirit (Ancestry.com, 2016). The country that possesses the largest amount of people with the last name Trinidad is the Philippines, followed by the United States and some Caribbean countries like the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. During my research, I found that some manuscripts belonging to the National Library of Madrid relate the last name Trinidad to a shield for being closely linked to Spain, and for the ties to nobility.
According to my great-grandmother, the last name originated in Spain in the tenth century when people who were Jewish and Hebrew converted to Catholicism and signed with the word “Trinidad” as a way to demonstrate they had truly changed their beliefs. Records show that first person with the last name Trinidad to arrive in the Dominican Republic was Eugenio Trinidad, a prosperous business man that emigrated from the Canary Islands in 1780. Eugenio settled on the northeast side of the island where he bought multiple acres of land in the area that makes up the present city of Samana. Eugenio Trinidad married Maria del Rosario Mejia and procreated seven children, three boys, and four girls. It is said that approximately 160 to 180 of the roughly 230 people with the last name Trinidad in the Dominican Republic descent from Eugenio Trinidad. Although my family and the lawyers had gathered enough information and proof of our decadence from Eugenio Trinidad, the state had not yet ruled in favor of the Trinidad family and it is unsure if the land would stay in the hands of the state or would pass to be a property of the descendants of Eugenio Trinidad.
On the other hand, for my second last name Valerio, I did not possess as many information as I did for my first last name.

My grandfather passed away when my mom and her sibling were extremely young and all that my grandmother recalls is that the last name derived from Spanish heritage. During my research, I found out that the last name Valerio could have originated in Italy or Spain as large percentages of the population with this last name reside in both countries. The last name takes different forms depending on the regions or countries, Valerio, Valerio, Valeri, Valerius and Valiant (Surname Database, 2016). The last name belonged to one of the most prominent families from the Roman Empire during the times of Julio Caesar. Some people claim it derives from the Latin word “valeo” which means to be strong and sturdy. Others claim that it derived from the first name Valere which means to flourish or be wealthy (Surname Database, 2016). From the testimony of my family, I could conclude that my last name, in fact, is linked to Spanish heritages since my grandfather’s ancestors were from Spanish decadence, but I do not possess exact information about when, where and who first arrived at the Dominican Republic with this last

name.
In conclusion, both of my last names seem to have Spanish heritage and possess meaning within Spanish language, culture, and religion. Since Spanish colonist colonized the island in the late fourteen hundred, the Dominican Republic is a country with Spanish heritage. Although the island possesses a big mixture of race and ethnicity, a huge percentage of the last names in the country descent from Spanish culture.