Surname distribution in Galicia: population structure, dialects, and history

Abstract

The study of the geographic distribution of surnames is a useful source of information for probing the structure of populations and their links with history, and language. The relationship between the transmission of surnames and the dissemination of some genetic markers explains why family names continue to be a rich depository of information for geneticists, human biologists, and anthropologists. In Western societies, family names are distributed in space according to patterns determined by the origin of their bearers, the mobility of populations, and the social and cultural characteristics of communities. Consequently, studying the distribution of surnames is one way of reconstructing the history of populations. This study considers the use of surnames as a basis to regionalize the surname space of Galicia, a cultural, linguistic, and historical community in northwest Spain. We studied the isonymy structure using the distribution of single surnames in 315 administrative divisions to discover traces of historical phenomena. The analysis was conducted according to procedures that have already been used in previous studies, but with some modifications that enhance the value of the information analyzed. The results allow us to identify onomastic regions that show interesting correlations with dialect and historical divisions of the Galician territory.