In Spain there is a surname that was for centuries a social conviction. Today thousands and thousands of people use it

In North Korea there is a word that marks the life of its 26.4 million inhabitants from the cradle: Songbuna term that is usually translated as “origin” or “seed” and that in practice works as A caste system based on the merits of the ancestors. If your grandparents and parents have a good file that translates into a good Songbunwhich guarantees facilities throughout life. Discol ancestors with the regime carry the opposite.

In Spain Songbun It sounds distant concept, but for a long time there were certain surnames that complicated the future to those who took them, including an especially popular one that they share today tens of thousands of Spaniards.

Surname question. Babies do not arrive with a bread bar under their arm, but they do with something that defines them much more: surnames. Its history is long. And complex. In Rome they already used the Tria payrolla system that identified citizens with several ‘labels’ (roster and cognomen) that went beyond the simple first name and revealed the family clan from which they came.

With the passing centuries, surnames have evolved to the current system, sometimes with key changes, such as the driven In the sixteenth century by Cardinal Cisneros and that contributed to the fact that in Spain we have two surnames.

But … And when are there no parents? Each of us we have taken surnames of our parents, but … What happens when that figure does not exist? What happens to ‘uprooted’ babies who were abandoned to the gates of churches and end up creating in orphanages, without a known family? In those cases it had to pull inventive, although it was not strange that the institutions resort to certain formulas standard that if for something stood out it was their total lack of touch.

In even many children received surnames such as incognito, Diosdado, white or lying. In Catalonia, it was also resorted to Deulofeua formula that can be translated as “God did”. And that to quote only a handful of examples.

On other occasions, more imaginative solutions were chosen, such as religious references or the place where the creature had been found, a frequent practice for example in Gipuzkoa for a good part of the nineteenth century. Antton Iparraguirre had a few years ago in Basque newspaper How between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries there were quite a few orphan from Pamplona who received the surname Goñi in tribute to Don Ramiro de Goñi, benefactor of the General Hospital.

Distribution of the surname Expósito (as the first last name).

The last name of the “abandoned”. Another helpful solution (much less discreet) was surname Expósitoa word that comes from Latin expositus, Exponowhich means “put out.” Expósito thus became the last name of the abandoned, those creatures that their parents disregard because they could not afford their parenting, for shame or because their parents had not recognized them as legitimate. His luck was to end up care of the State or the Church, breastfed by nodrizas. Only the luckiest ended up prohibited.

More than a last name. “Expósito was and is more than a surname, it is a label that pointed to both the person who had unknowns, unknown parents, as well as their descendants, since it proclaims the four winds that at some point the origins are uncertain,” Write The genealogist Mireia Nieto in great -grandson.

In Your essay On the abandonment of children between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the Pamplona orfelineo, historian Lola Valverde also recalls that the figure of the Expósito was presented in a way as that of “a condemned by society.” “As if he were guilty of his situation and to accept his destiny without rebeling, educational approaches are outlined,” he reflects.

The last name exposed became a brand, a label that reminded them of for life (them and the rest of society) that were the result of abandonment. The echoes of your stigma can still be found in The regulation of the Civil Registry of 1958, in which the judges are recognized the power to manage changes of the surname “or other analogues, indicators of unknown origin”.

A figure: 34,084. The times of the old orfeliners of the old regime, to which children arrived familically and terrified, which reduced their survival possibilities, are already behind, but not the last name exposed. Although it is not even from far as popular as “García”, “Pérez” or “González”, the database The INE shows that today identifies tens of thousands of people in Spain.

34,084 They use it as the first last name, especially in Lugo, Badajoz and part of Andalusia. 37,332 They use it as a second. There are even 382 that are named “Expósito Expósito”. And another Good handful of hundreds that are used.

Images | Wikipedia and INE

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