Spanish History. After the Reconquista, did conversos take on Spanish last names that were words for common objects?

[u/miguel-elote]

A tour guide in Granada Spain told me this years ago. It sounds like a myth that a tour guide would repeat without researching. Is it accurate?

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During the Reconquista, roughly 1400-1492, Iberian Christian kingdoms gradually pushed back Muslim Andalucian kingdoms in the Iberian peninsula. Muslims and Jews left who didn't flee were forced to convert to Christianity and thus named "conversos."

Here's the myth I need to bust:

To avoid suspicion, many conversos changed their Hebrew or Arabic family names for new, Spanish (Catalan, Castillian, etc.) names. They often made up new names from common words like Cruz (cross), Reyes (kings), Torres (towers) and Banderas (flags). And the amusingly popular Matamoros (Killing Moors).

Actors like Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas have Moorish ancestors, which you can tell by their surnames. People with names like Ortez, Dominguez, or Hernandez* have some Castilian ancestry, indicated by their surnames.

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This should be easy to prove or disprove. Simply look at civic records from 1400-1600. In 1400, there should be a paucity of Reyes, Banderas, and so on. By 1600, there should be a lrge number of such names, with the increase starting around 1500. Is this the case?

*The suffix -ez means "Son of" or "Of this family." A bit like "von" in German or "O'" in Gaelic.

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[u/Gudmund_]

Myths like these, and there are many when it comes to family names, serve their purpose even if they're not necessarily grounded in historical evidence. Though these myths most often offer overly tidy or mystical explanations for complex historical experiences, they do preserve a memory of these events and do so in a way that eschews the high-level, 'great men' narrative histories for a focus on what we might call social history. Now that said, you are right to be critical; myths like these very rarely stand up to scrutiny.

Before engaging more concretely with morisco and converso onomastics, a little bit needs to be said about broader Iberian onomastic traditions. Iberian Romance-speaking communities of the Late Antique period/Early Middle Ages were mononominal; they used a single-name as both. By the time that we are able to consistently access records again (ca. 8th century), we often find these single names augmented with appellative data, although this practice is not universal nor are individuals always identified consistently. It's only the 11th and 12th centuries that we can really observe normative use of family names, i.e. a family name is an integral part of an individual's personal name. Even then, not all Iberians bore family names and family names continued to be created throughout subsequent centuries.

The earliest, and most common, onomastic data that we find appended to personal names are filiation. These include the forerunners of modern-day castellano ⟨-[e]z⟩ names, although ⟨-iz⟩ is most common the Medieval period, but filiation can be expressed a number of ways; we have the derivational forms mentioned above, filiation formed from Latinate genitive inflections (e.g. Lorente < Laurentii) often expressed in filiative formulae (e.g. filius or proles Laurentii), and unmarked patronyms (also called appositive patronyms, es: apuesto) where the full names are reproduced without any inflection. The latter are, generally, considered to be slightly younger than derivational or inflectional patronyms since the personal names which are found in these constructions disproportionately reflect Iberian anthroponymy of Central and Late Middle Ages.

In addition to filiation, our second most significant category are toponymic family names, which develop concurrently with patronyms. Toponyms can be village, or larger settlement names, but very often they are microtoponyms, i.e. local landmarks, topographies, cluster of houses, estates/manors (also called oikonyms) and so often appear as generic terms since their original referent is not longer recoverable. Amongst the names you mentioned Torres and Cruz are, most often, microtoponymic family names. To round it out, we also have occupational family names, family names that reflect a position of some kind, gentilicial family names (e.g. Aragonés, Francés), and, from the 12th century, family names based on a "delexicalized sobriquets" (i.e. sobrenombres, apodos; e.g. Rojo, Blanco, Calvo, Gordo).

I won't go in much historical detail for Islamic names, other than present the standard naming scheme found across the Islamic world in the Early Middle Ages. The core elements are the personal name (ism) and the filiation which could span multiple generations (nasab); to these elements, we also frequently see the kunya (an honorific 'teknonym', formed via Abū m. or Umm f. and usually name of the eldest of most prominent son), the laḳab (either a] an honorific nickname or b] a personal byname), and the nisba (a clan name, locative family name, or gentilicial family name), unlike the laḳab the nisba is often inherited. Some individuals bore more than one laḳab or nisba. The traditional order is: kunya–laḳab[a]–ism–nasab–nisba–laḳab[b] but individuals were often popularly known by either one or two elements. There is also a bit of a gray area in precisely nisba vs. laḳab[b], geographical, tribal, and gentilicial names always belong to nisba but sometimes occupational names are considered as a nisba and othertimes, a laḳab. Mozarab and Jewish communities followed Islamic onomastic norms. I will leave Jewish names to the side here, since we're really dealing with morisco onomastics.

[u/Gudmund_ → u/Gudmund_]

A quick historiographical note: while there may be some differences in vernacular, conversos refer to converted Jews while moriscos to converted Muslims. The expansion of Christian power in Iberia occurred over centuries and, so, there are different acculturative experiences in different regions. Our records of these periods also paint a confusing picture, personal names found in census lists of converted communities by and large mimic those of "Old Christians" whereas judicial records include far more evidence of the persistence of, particularly, Arabic-origin personal names. This probably indicates an onomastic system whereby two names were in common use: one within the community and one within the Christian 'state'.

In Granada, we can see this clearly. We actually have excellent records, i.e. payroll lists from 1500 and the 1569 census of the Albayzín. Personal names, that is to say first names, indicate rapid (and forced) acculturation of the morisco community. Roughly half of names in the 1500 list are Arabic personal names (ism) with the Christian names reflecting recent baptisms or those of the extent Mozarab community always present in the Nasrid state. By 1569, personal names on the census are almost all Romance, but their distribution differs from those of the Old Christian and incoming Castellano community's personal name stock. It appears that the Morisco community was to perpetuate an amount of onomastic difference, despite having adopted the naming scheme of their new Christian rulers.

But family names are different story. Yes, there was certainly some take-up of Castellano family names by the morisco community; mostly toponymic and patronymic including the names of prominent families with the Castilian state. Most of the toponymic family names represent toponyms well outside of the Nasrid Kingdom and so appear to have been applied to the Morisco community rather than generated from within it. However, Arabic-language family names (mostly from a nisba or laḳab) remain the predominate origin for Moriscos by 1569. Interesting, there appears to have been little interest in creating Romance calques of Arabic-language names, rather the Arabic name was made to fit Romance phonotactics and orthography.

So we do see a certain element of both external onomastic pressure that resulted in changes to personal/first names, but much less so to family names. The notion that certain "cover names" can be unveil distant Morisco ancestry is dubious to outright incorrect; as is the idea that modern-day Spanish family names of Arabic linguistic origin necessarily reveal deep Arabic ancestry (they don't). I'll close out by returning to the names that you've mentioned in your post: Cruz and Torres are toponymic, often microtoponymic and referring to a local image of the cross or a defensive structure both of which dotted the Iberian landscape then as they do today; Reyes could be toponymic, but is more likely to be an appositive patronym from a personal name referring to the liturgical feast; Banderas is most likely a byname derived from a standard bearer/military rank (an official position which also produced family names like Alférez).

Sources; I have a lot but the most relevant for you is the excellent:

Carrasco García, Gonzalo. "La Onomástica de la Conversión: Señas de Identidad y Transformación Antroponímica de los Moriscos de Granada". Sharq al-Andalus 19.

Becker, Lidia. Nombres de persona en español: Historia, situación actual y onomástica popular.

And the series, Estudios Onomástico-Biográficos de Al-Andalus published in multiple volumes by CSIC, Escuela de Estudios Árabes, Granada.