PORTUGUESE Character Names

**deRougemont** · February 18, 2007, 01:59 PM

Faction: Portugal
Status: Complete
Total Names: ~300
Authors: Manji

To view the custom names list developed for Portugal, click on "show" below:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Suggestions for improvement are welcome; post below...

**Boicote** · February 19, 2007, 07:24 PM

Nice work!

But there are some things you need to change.

In my opinion, you should remove these names:
Agostinho
Alberto
Artur
Cláudio
Durão
Freitas
Osório
Quaresma
Sampaio
Sarmento

...in my research, I didn’t find medieval persons with those names.

The following names should be moved to surnames section:

Bento
Brás
Estevão

And this one's should be moved to characters section:

Dinis
Duarte
André

In my opinion, the surname “Gama” should be changed to “da Gama” and moved to bynames section.
The names “de Lopes” and “de Seabra” shouldn’t have the word “de” before the name (just “ Lopes” and “Seabra”).
And I think that’s more correct to use “da Guarda” instead of “de Guarda”.

These names should be added to characters section

Egas
Fuas

And these to surname section:

Azevedo
Codax
Cão
Correia
Coelho
Damião
Faria
Figueiredo
Furtado
Geraldes
Lourenço
Martins
Mateus
Moniz
Meira
Portela
Resende
Santos
Távora
Teles
Viviães
Viegas
Vaz

;;bynames

de Camões
de Beja
de Castel de Vide
de Bragança
de Sá
de Góis
de Álvares
de Évora
das Regras
de Bonaval
de Guilhade
de Lemos
de Sandim

Finally, some women names:

Brites
Elvira
Elena ( or "Helena", but I think that in medieval age the correct form was "Elena")
Lucrecia
Mafalda

P.S. to Gil: segundo o que percebi, estes tipos querem nomes medievais e portanto, alguns deles necessitam de ser convertidos para uma forma mais arcaica. Quase que não seria necessário alterar os ficheiros originais porque, segundo este site, a pesquisa da CA até nem está má de todo.
Na minha opinião, eu gosto mais dos nomes escritos em português moderno e por isso, vou utilizar esta lista no mod que a comunidade portuguesa está a desenvolver.

**Manji** · February 23, 2007, 03:00 AM

Originally Posted by Boicote

Nice work!

But there are some things you need to change.

In my opinion, you should remove these names:
Agostinho
Alberto
Artur
Cláudio
Durão
Freitas
Osório
Quaresma
Sampaio
Sarmento

...in my research, I didn’t find medieval persons with those names.

Thanks for the comment.
In my research I found them all, I didn't include a single name that wasn't in one of my sources (check the end of this thread)

Originally Posted by Boicote

The following names should be moved to surnames section:
Bento
Brás
Estevão

All those names were considered, by then, both usable as surnames and first names. Some examples from the sources:

Bennto Tavares
Bras da Cunha
Estevan da Conceiçam Pereira

Originally Posted by Boicote

And this one's should be moved to characters section:
Dinis
Duarte
André

Again, same rule as above.

Originally Posted by Boicote

In my opinion, the surname “Gama” should be changed to “da Gama” and moved to bynames section.

"Gama" alone was a "common" (as in popular) surname, "da Gama" was a surname changed to fit a more "noble" character, hence my choice.

Originally Posted by Boicote

The names “de Lopes” and “de Seabra” shouldn’t have the word “de” before the name (just “ Lopes” and “Seabra”).

Lopes comes from the Spanish sources "Lopez" and "Lope" hence why the "de" is justified seeing as it isn't a patronym. As for Seabra I agree, i'll change it.

Originally Posted by Boicote

And I think that’s more correct to use “da Guarda” instead of “de Guarda”.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Boicote

These names should be added to characters section
Egas
Fuas

"Fuas" is a early medieval name, the criteria we decided was to keep only names that survived up until the Renaissance so that it might fit into any period of the game. Egas will be added.

P.S. to Gil:
Na minha opinião, eu gosto mais dos nomes escritos em português moderno e por isso, vou utilizar esta lista no mod que a comunidade portuguesa está a desenvolver.

Pois é, no inicio era essa a tendencia do lider do projecto mas após alguma discussão ficou decidido que utilizariamos os nomes escritos em Português Moderno, principalmente por motivos de leitura (como sabes os nomes escritos em português arcaico e luso-galaico podem induzir os leitores estrangeiros em erro).

Sources:

* A complete account of the Portuguese language, 1701; with, Grammatica Anglo-Lusitanica [by] A. J. (Menston, Scholar Press, 1970.)
* Livro do lançamento e serviço que a Cidade de Lisboa fez a Rei Nosso Senhor no ano de 1565; documentos para a historia da Cidade de Lisboa. (Lisboa: Câmara Municipal, 1947-48)
* Registo Onomástico Português - Da Fundação á Época das Descobertas (Lisboa: Câmara Municipal. 1962)

**deRougemont** · February 24, 2007, 02:41 PM

Alright, so I'll add...

da Guarda (instead of de)
Egas to first name for males

I added the default descr_strat.txt names to the PORT files; though most of them will give a different name in-game because of how I modified the names.txt file. Those names I added, and how they will show up in the game are as follows...

{Affonso}Afonso
{Fernandez}Fernandes
{Pirez}Pires
{Verisimo}Vicente
{Ramiric}Ramalho
{Johao}João
{Martio}Martin
{Meen}Mendo
{Manoel}Manuel

Does this look ok? Want me to change any of the "in-game" names above to something else? Any further suggestions or ideas?

**Manji** · February 24, 2007, 03:46 PM

Er... If i'm getting it right, the names between {} is how they will appear in-game? Because if so then there should be no change, all names should be written as they are spoken hence {João}João.

Also, Martin is a type, it should be Martim.

**deRougemont** · February 24, 2007, 03:58 PM

No, you see the names I listed above that are between {} are the names that the game needs to see (because this is how they are listed in the descr_strat.txt file). Since we don't won't to touch the descr_strat.txt file (all modders mod this file), we have to leave the names as they are between the {}, and change the name on the outside of the {}. That way we can leave the bad names as they are in the descr_strat.txt but still have correct names appear in the game (i.e., the names on the outside of the {}).

Is that a better explanation? Its hard to describe what I'm doing... Anyway, the big question is whether the names on the outside of the {} are the ones that you would like to show up for the beginning characters in MTW2? If not, I could easily change them...

Thanks for the Martim correction, I'll fix that...

Originally Posted by Gil

Er... If i'm getting it right, the names between {} is how they will appear in-game? Because if so then there should be no change, all names should be written as they are spoken hence {João}João.

Also, Martin is a type, it should be Martim.

**Manji** · February 24, 2007, 03:59 PM

Ah ok, then yes, they are ok.

**Boicote** · February 26, 2007, 12:27 PM

Originally Posted by deRougemont

Any further suggestions or ideas?

Well, some names were more popular than other. For example, you can find many people with the name "Afonso", "João" or "Gonçalo" in Middle Age. So, I suggest the repetition of these names. For example:

descr_names.txt:
Afonso_1
Afonso_2
Afonso_3
Afonso_4

names.txt:
{Afonso_1}Afonso
{Afonso_2}Afonso
{Afonso_3}Afonso
{Afonso_4}Afonso

This way, there is more probability to have characters with the name Afonso.

Gil, what do you think of this list?

Azevedo
Cão
Correia
Coelho
Damião
Faria
Figueiredo
Furtado
Geraldes
Martins
Mateus
Moniz
Meira
Portela
Resende
Santos
Távora
Teles
Viviães
Viegas
Vaz

;;bynames

de Camões
de Beja
de Castel de Vide
de Bragança
de Sá
de Góis
de Álvares
de Évora
das Regras
de Lemos
de Sandim

You can find here some important names (“Cão” from “Diogo Cão”, “Geraldes” from “Geraldo Geraldes”, "de Góis" from "Damião de Góis", "das Regras" from "João das Regras", etc…)

**deRougemont** · February 26, 2007, 01:05 PM

Originally Posted by Boicote

Well, some names were more popular than other. For example, you can find many people with the name "Afonso", "João" or "Gonçalo" in Middle Age. So, I suggest the repetition of these names. For example:

descr_names.txt:
Afonso_1
Afonso_2
Afonso_3
Afonso_4

names.txt:
{Afonso_1}Afonso
{Afonso_2}Afonso
{Afonso_3}Afonso
{Afonso_4}Afonso

This way, there is more probability to have characters with the name Afonso.

Gil, what do you think of this list?

You can find here some important names (“Cão” from “Diogo Cão”, “Geraldes” from “Geraldo Geraldes”, "de Góis" from "Damião de Góis", "das Regras" from "João das Regras", etc…)

Hi Boicote,

I have thought about repeating names as you suggest, but haven't done it yet. Have you tried the above method? (i.e., {afonso_2}Afonso). Doest that work, or do we still need to test it? I'm not opposed to making some names more common, but don't want to alter the files until we know that it works as you have written above...

Also, are these additional names you've posted? If so, good. I would like to average about 300 names per faction... Maybe we should break it down like this:

male first names ~100+
last names ~100+
bynames ~50+
female first names ~50+

That's 300+ total names in a list...

More than 500 names is excessive. So far, they way I do it is to find all the names I can. Then, I go back through this "rough" list and delete uncommon or questionable names (or ones I just don't like). So for my lists, I've usually had about 500 in the beginning. Then I like to cut it down to 350 names or so. (I'm actually going to do this to the HRE names soon)...

What do you guys think?

**Manji** · February 26, 2007, 01:13 PM

Originally Posted by Boicote

Gil, what do you think of this list?

You can find here some important names (“Cão” from “Diogo Cão”, “Geraldes” from “Geraldo Geraldes”, "de Góis" from "Damião de Góis", "das Regras" from "João das Regras", etc…)

That's the real problem.
For instance, surnames of patronymic/functional origin like Cão, Porco, Pardal (names with a animal meaning and therefore attributed, at least originally, with the intent of classifying a person by it's traits or profession) are very uncommon, even then. This applies to some surnames that weren't common but became famous because the people that had them were to be famous, such as "Camões", "Cão", "Regras", etc.
Having, as it is possible, more than one "Something das Regras" would be strange, not to mention unrealistic.

Some names you indicated are already in as bynames and putting them as surnames could be troublesome. (you could end up with a guy called João Azevedo de Azevedo...). It's a tough choice though, deciding between surnames and bynames.

The following surnames could be added (I must say that I've not found them on the official sources) though we can be almost sure they were used:

Correia
Coelho
Faria
Figueiredo
Furtado
Geraldes (this one is OK for sure, it's the patronymic form of "Geraldo", meaning "son of Geraldo")
Martins (another one that is prefectly OK, same as above, "son of Martim")
Moniz
Meira
Portela
Resende
Santos
Teles
Viviães
Viegas
Vaz

Note to deRougemont: these are all surnames.

**deRougemont** · February 26, 2007, 01:49 PM

Originally Posted by Gil

That's the real problem.
For instance, surnames of patronymic/functional origin like Cão, Porco, Pardal (names with a animal meaning and therefore attributed, at least originally, with the intent of classifying a person by it's traits or profession) are very uncommon, even then. This applies to some surnames that weren't common but became famous because the people that had them were to be famous, such as "Camões", "Cão", "Regras", etc.
Having, as it is possible, more than one "Something das Regras" would be strange, not to mention unrealistic.

Right, so we could possibly make some names appear more often in-game than others, but we should limit this to only common first names such as "Alfonso". We won't touch surnames/bynames, right? You guys would have to decide which ones I add. However, at this point I would just like to finish the names for Western factions before we alter the lists to make some names more common. Perhaps after we do the first release of the compiled names lists, I can do this for the second release.

Originally Posted by Gil

Some names you indicated are already in as bynames and putting them as surnames could be troublesome. (you could end up with a guy called João Azevedo de Azevedo...). It's a tough choice though, deciding between surnames and bynames.

This shouldn't be a problem since the bynames and surnames are one list, not seperate. The game only assigns either a byname or a family name; never both. You would never see a "João Azevedo de Azevedo" unless you entered {João_Azevedo}João Azevedo into the names lists as a first name. Having said that, are there any other names we could add to the surnames/bynames list you okay'd below...?

Originally Posted by Gil

The following surnames could be added (I must say that I've not found them on the official sources) though we can be almost sure they were used:

Correia
Coelho
Faria
Figueiredo
Furtado
Geraldes (this one is OK for sure, it's the patronymic form of "Geraldo", meaning "son of Geraldo")
Martins (another one that is prefectly OK, same as above, "son of Martim")
Moniz
Meira
Portela
Resende
Santos
Teles
Viviães
Viegas
Vaz

I hope I understood everything you were talking about, forgive me if I didn't

**Manji** · February 26, 2007, 01:56 PM

Nope, you understood it perfectly.

Ok, so the full list of surnames and bynames to add is:

Surnames:

Azevedo
Correia
Coelho
Faria
Figueiredo
Furtado
Geraldes
Martins
Mateus
Moniz
Meira
Portela
Resende
Santos
Teles
Viviães
Viegas
Vaz

Bynames:

de Beja
de Castelo de Vide
de Bragança
de Sá
de Góis
de Álvares
de Évora
de Lemos
de Sandim

**deRougemont** · February 26, 2007, 02:01 PM

Good.

Also, I'm not too concerned whether these new names were found in sources or not. If you both agree that these names must have existed then (even without hard proof), that is good enough for me. I am doing the same thing with the Venetian bynames. Anyway, I wanted to beef-up the Portugese names list a bit anyway... like I said, 300 names per faction is ideal, and this puts us closer to that mark! If you guys can find more, please post them here and I'll add them. I think the PORT list has about 250 names so far...

After we hear back from Boicote, I'll add these names to the PORT files and repost everything...

**numerosdecimus** · February 26, 2007, 04:41 PM

Just a question I think it is important.

Besides from using common names at that time, will we also be using the way that name was writen at that time?

--

I can't reall put any new names with the exception of names such as de Covilha or such, and remember that names like these weren't really part of that person's real name. For instance, Pero da Covilha, the surname da Covilha existed because his name was a simple name, just Pero. Yet I don't think we have to worry about this since we're talking about nobility and royalty names. Heck we can even make a train of words with just one of the members of the royal house.

You guys simply grabbed practically every name in existance. There's not much I can do here besides some attention points concerning names.

--

Pay attention to names concering weeds and plants because they are related to new christians mostly on a speciffic later time(17th century) yet way before the new christians, these names were already used by both the jewish population and christian population of Portugal (just a little side note).

--

The following names did not exist in the portuguese name list at that time:

Fernandez nor Ferrandez, people seem to frequently mistake this, but I think this is something you guys have taken care of a long time ago.
Gomez
Henriquez

At this time names already had the z to s difference which by the way portuguese evolved closely from gallician and in parallel with gallician and gallician did not have these words in it's native vocab. Technically it's main reasons to be present in Portugal at that time would practically only be if an imigrant came from Castele-Leon and lived in Portugal.

I also remember people that Pinto da Costa is a name that did not exist at that time, nor Cavaco.

**Manji** · February 26, 2007, 05:16 PM

Numerus, obviously you haven't read the name's list nor the sources that were used to compile the list. We actually made the effort (and still are) to keep the list as faithful as possible to the time span between D.Afonso Henriques up to the late Renaissance/colonization of Brazil.

As for how the names are written, we decided upon using modern nomenclature/writing system namely for reading comprehension by non-portuguese speakers (for example, "Fernam" was read "Fernão" but a non-portuguese speaker would read it as "Fern-ham").

Also:

Originally Posted by numerosdecimus

Pay attention to names concering weeds and plants because they are related to new christians mostly on a speciffic later time(17th century) yet way before the new christians, these names were already used by both the jewish population and christian population of Portugal (just a little side note).

Seriously, that is a urban myth that has been told time and time again. Even one of the most respected Portuguese historians, Professor José Hermano Saraiva, has publicly explained it is a myth created by historians of the beginning of our century which, unfortunately, had no access to some hagiographical sources that later historians had.
Like you said, surnames whose etymology is connected to botanical elements (Pereira, Silva, Carvalho, etc...) are Christian in origin (and some of them, like Silva, are of Latin origin) and have nothing to do with Judaic or non-Judaic origins.
The fact remains that many New Christians, trying to blend in with the Old Christians, took the most common names as surnames too, hence why the myth began.

**numerosdecimus** · February 26, 2007, 05:29 PM

Seriously, that is a urban myth that has been told time and time again. Even one of the most respected Portuguese historians, Professor José Hermano Saraiva, has publicly explained it is a myth created by historians of the beginning of our century which, unfortunately, had no access to some hagiographical sources that later historians had.
Like you said, surnames whose etymology is connected to botanical elements (Pereira, Silva, Carvalho, etc...) are Christian in origin (and some of them, like Silva, are of Latin origin) and have nothing to do with Judaic or non-Judaic origins.
The fact remains that many New Christians, trying to blend in with the Old Christians, took the most common names as surnames too, hence why the myth began.

The names existed before. They couldn't simply appear out of nowhere.

I have a certain doubt: I heard the name Silva came from Latin, yet, I've also once heard some wierd statement that the name may have been more widely used since the 16 century? Or is this mindless speculation?

And I did read the lists. Yet, my knowledge on old portuguese names isn't that extensive, thus the reason I made that question. Now I have the definite answer. After all I did write this:

You guys simply grabbed practically every name in existance. There's not much I can do here besides some attention points concerning names.

But I don't blame you, my statements were perhaps a little confusing, so it's my fault.

By the way, aren't we in an ironic situation? Jewish influence has been relatively strong in portugal and gallicia through out most of portuguese history, yet in the last centuries we have lost this influence gradually(concerning the percentage of jewish population in society, not the actual cultural impact) which had been extremely important for our country through out a large portion of our country's history.

**Manji** · February 27, 2007, 05:34 AM

Originally Posted by numerosdecimus

The names existed before. They couldn't simply appear out of nowhere.

Yes, that was my point. The vast majority of names had a Latin origin (ergo, Christian), though occasionally you can find Moorish, Mozarabic, Frankish, Germanic, even Norman.

Originally Posted by numerosdecimus

I have a certain doubt: I heard the name Silva came from Latin, yet, I've also once heard some wierd statement that the name may have been more widely used since the 16 century? Or is this mindless speculation?

Silva (and other names like Silvio, Silvia, Silveira) come from the latin silva meaning "wood, forest". Most etymologists agree that it probably appeared in Leon or Coruña and from there spread to the rest of the Iberian Peninsula.
What happened was that when the majority of jewish population was forced to convert they took the most common names around and later when they were expelled from Portugal they immigrated to England or the Netherlands but took their surnames (Gomes, Silva, Carvalho, etc) and the myth of the "jewish surnames" became stronger; people could no longer "trust" someone's surname to define his religion.
I myself am a "Silva" by my mother's side though my Silva grandparents were galician.

Originally Posted by numerosdecimus

By the way, aren't we in an ironic situation? Jewish influence has been relatively strong in portugal and gallicia through out most of portuguese history, yet in the last centuries we have lost this influence gradually(concerning the percentage of jewish population in society, not the actual cultural impact) which had been extremely important for our country through out a large portion of our country's history.

Hmmm... well, most historians, Portuguese and foreign, agree that two of the country which have the least Jewish influence are Portugal and Spain, mainly because since the beginning of the Medieval Era both nations have not been overtly friendly to jews. I think it's only normal that they wouldn't leave much of a mark in our history, specially since we have been a Roman Catholic nation for more than 900 years.
As a curiosity, we are the only nation in Europe who has a noble family of Jewish ancestry dating back from 1400's, the Silveira family of Porto, which were the only Jewish family granted nobility status by the King himself. (they were extremely rich and sponsored some royal ventures).

**Tankai** · February 27, 2007, 05:52 AM

Hey people, how do we get those files in the game? I tried decompressing the files in the game itself, but then i couldnt play the battle maps. Is there another way?

**Ludicus** · February 27, 2007, 09:12 AM

Congratulations,Gil and Boicote:great,perfect,professional work.

**numerosdecimus** · February 27, 2007, 09:59 AM

Hmmm... well, most historians, Portuguese and foreign, agree that two of the country which have the least Jewish influence are Portugal and Spain, mainly because since the beginning of the Medieval Era both nations have not been overtly friendly to jews. I think it's only normal that they wouldn't leave much of a mark in our history, specially since we have been a Roman Catholic nation for more than 900 years.

I think I must somewhat disagree with this, yet if I'm wrong then take back what I said.

During the early and middle middle ages, Jewish influence in Portugal was strong, examples of this comes from records showing that Jews were policitaly welcomed in Portugal, many portuguese kings had then as their main advisors, several diplomats and political figures were of Jewish etnicity, to such an extent that maoy foreign countries thought that Portugal was literally a Jewish country. Jews(as in most places) had a crucial impact in economy of Portugal, in all sectors, but somewhat less in the douro plantations because they were already under a very weak yet slowly growing english influence at that time(12th century). Records show that Jews had only began to be persecuted in the end of the first half of the 16th century(because of the royal family influence and even their deep roots in portuguese society).

Before the 16th century Jews were not persecuted, in fact, they were even welcomed members of the society. There are even record and writen proof that christian and jewish members of the population exchanging gifts in important religious days/ceremonies of both religions. The jews had royal protection and were well seen from both the nobility classes and especially from the royal family. They, along with other christian portuguese citizans, were the important powerful middle class that the country needed, and yes, their importance became even greater during the portuguese discoveries, by financing several investements. Remember that Portugal was the last country in europe to have accepted the inquisition, and only with the loss of independence was the inquisition fully put to action. Before that several kings, especially D.Manuel, had repeatedly halted the inquision and even made smart political and judicial actions to halt the inquisition and even confuse the inquisition in Portugal itself.

And the list goes on.

Yet, my sources on this are:

"Spanish and Portuguese Jewry", by Singerman, Robert.

"The end of Days: a Story of Tolerance, Tyranny and the expulsion of the Jews by Paris, Erna.

I have even read some sources from Sephardic Jews, and read some "results" of modern studies of the very detailed records that were revieled by inquisition itself.

My opinion on this is that Jewish influence in Portugal was very high, and the way they were rooted to our society was almost without parallel in catholic countries. Remember, it was the portuguese jews mostly who gave holland the resources and political impact for the creation of the "dutch empire" itlse,f although it wasn't exactly an empire "per se" but more the Dutch east company and the dutch west company.

Again I say, if I'm wrong then I take back what I said.

Yet, it is my opinion that this hole thing that Jews= not welcome in portugal, is just balony, they were extremely important in our history and their influence in society fundamental, and they were very, but very well rooted in the portuguese society.

By the way, I just like you, have Silva as my last name.

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