Acorán, Aday, Ayose, Doramas, Yeray Zebenzuí, Dácil, Fayna, Gara, Guacimara, Ico and Yurena are some of the best-known Guanche names in the Archipelago and that many people carry, whether or not they were born in the Canary Islands.
Howeverlittle has been said about Guanche surnames that still exist in the world and that carry more than 50,000 people.
Who knows if after the blockbuster movie sagas Eight Basque surnames, Eight Catalan surnames and Eight Moroccan surnameswhose premiere is scheduled for next December 1, one day a screenwriter and a film director will dare to make a fiction with seven Guanche surnames. The topic, of course, would give rise to more than one curiosity.
In the world there are more than 50,000 people who carry one of the seven Guanche surnames. They still survive among us and in the Canary Islands many people wear them,” reveals the tiktoker. @anaencanarias.
Among the surnames cited by the tiktoker is Tenerifealthough “in the Canary Islands there is no one who has that surname,” he specifies.
Instead, In the Philippines, there are more than 3,000 people with the last name Tenerifehe highlights.
How did Guanche surnames arise?
At the time of evangelization in the Philippines, one of the methods was give the evangelized person the surname of the place of origin of the religious who baptized him.
The place where they carry the highest percentage of one of the seven Guanche surnames outside the Canary Islands is America
However, the place where they carry the highest percentage of one of the seven Guanche surnames outside the Canary Islands is America.
Although there are many more, there are seven surnames of Guanche origin that survive among us today. In the Canary Islands there are 6,000 people with surnames of Guanche origin but none with the name of the island of Tenerife.
What are the seven Guanche surnames?
“If you have any of these seven Guanche surnames, you should know that your origins are from the Canary Islands,” says @anaencanarias.
The surnames that still survive are:
- Baute
- Bencomo
- China
- Guanche
- Oramas
- Tacoronte
- Tenerife
The data that @anaencanarias appeals to has been compiled in his book 69 Canarian surnames. Guanche lineages in America, from Editorial Kinnamon, the geologist, paleontologist and doctor in Zoology Francisco García-Talavera.
The author explained in an interview with Efe at the time why none of the 6,000 people who have a Guanche surname in the Canary Islands do not carry the Tenerife surname.
This “very curious” fact, according to the researcher, and the reason why the surname Tenerife has 40 bearers in the Balearic Islandsmay be due to the fact that one of the main centers of the slave trade existed in Ibiza, so Guanches could have arrived there to be sold and they were given the surname of the island of origin.
But where this surname is most abundant is in the Philippineswhere friars who had left the Canary Islands arrived in the 16th century to evangelize the population, and baptized the converts with the name of their native island.
Along with these surnames there are almost 70 that García-Talavera breaks down in his work with statistical tables and that are of Guanche, Portuguese, Castilian, Norman, Genoese and Flemish origin, among others, that were adapted in the Canary Islands and that spread from the Archipelago with immigration to the whole world.
