Common Anglicized Portuguese surnames.

[Sikeliot]

In my area we have a lot of Portuguese Americans, whose families have been here for generations, who no longer have "Portuguese" surnames but rather an Anglicized version. Those of you who live near Portuguese people, have you noticed something similar?

The most common ones I see, that I can recognize;

Barros and deBarros --> "Barrows"
Rodrigues --> "Roderick"
Pires --> "Peters"
Andrade --> "Andrews"
Henriques --> "Hendricks"
Freitas --> "Francis"
Cruz --> "Cross"

Any others?

[Atlantic Islander]

Rodrigues to Rogers
Silva to Silver/s
Martins stayed Martins
Pereira to Perry
Flamengos to Fleming/s
Felipe to Phillips

Like I mentioned to you it was usually due to one of two things - to avoid discrimination or an error when they immigrated (the person writing it down just wrote what they heard).

I'll try and think of some more names.

[Sikeliot]

I only know one person with Martins as a last name, and it's my friend's boyfriend's Cape Verdean grandmother's maiden name. Otherwise, until I got to the internet, I didn't even know it existed.

Some are probably translated directly. I know Portuguese Americans with "Bridges" and "King" as last names.. and obviously they must have originally been Pontes and Reis.

[Atlantic Islander]

I only know one person with Martins as a last name, and it's my friend's boyfriend's Cape Verdean grandmother's maiden name. Otherwise, until I got to the internet, I didn't even know it existed.

Some are probably translated directly. I know Portuguese Americans with "Bridges" and "King" as last names.. and obviously they must have originally been Pontes and Reis.

Yes, they would have done that to avoid discrimination. Another thing is that multi-generational Portuguese aren't always fully Portuguese, they may have other ancestry as well and that could contribute to the name difference. There are plenty of only partially Portuguese-Americans that are active in festas and identify as Portuguese-American. I'm actually going to start a thread about Portuguese Americans (the multi-generational kind), to show some of the minor differences.

[Han Cholo]

Rodrigues to Rogers
Silva to Silver/s
Martins stayed Martins
Pereira to Perry
Flamengos to Fleming/s
Felipe to Phillips

Like I mentioned to you it was usually due to one of two things - to avoid discrimination or an error when they immigrated (the person writing it down just wrote what they heard).

I'll try and think of some more names.

That is not even an accurate translation. Silva means forest or jungle. Do people really do that?

[Sikeliot]

daSilva sometimes becomes Sylvia around here.

[Atlantic Islander]

That is not even an accurate translation. Silva means forest or jungle. Do people really do that?

So? It's not about translating it, it's about making is sound more "American". Some people even ended up with very different surnames, because the person writing it wasn't able to figure out what they were saying.

[Atlantic Islander]

There are also some like my own that already sound American, so there wasn't a need to change it.

[Smaug]

I have already seen Abreu - Abroy

[pinguino]

In my area we have a lot of Portuguese Americans, whose families have been here for generations, who no longer have "Portuguese" surnames but rather an Anglicized version. Those of you who live near Portuguese people, have you noticed something similar?

The most common ones I see, that I can recognize;

Barros and deBarros --> "Barrows"
Rodrigues --> "Roderick"
Pires --> "Peters"
Andrade --> "Andrews"
Henriques --> "Hendricks"
Freitas --> "Francis"
Cruz --> "Cross"

Any others?

That's weird, in here there are many hispanized last names, like these samples:

Goodman -> Guzman
Evans -> Ibañez
Blumen -> Flores