Tamez or Tames from Llanes, Asturias and Mexico

[Art]

In another message about the 2005 Potomac Celtic Festival, I wrote:

MEETING OTHER ASTURIANS
In talking to one visitor, Steve McClelland (who I think was wearing a 1883 Victorian Scottish Highlander soldiers uniform outfit), I learned that he was 1/16 Asturian. His ancestor, an Asturian named Tamez, had emigrated to Mexico. He also told me that this man was thought to be the ancestor of all people named Tamez in Mexico. Later I introduced Steve to Alfonso, telling him about the Tamez ancestor. Alfonso was amazed, because he was also related to a Tamez in Mexico! Cousins! One wore a Highlander uniform, the other a traditional Asturian costume, but both are Asturians.

Well, not quite. Steve tells me that his family name was "Tamez," but that his mother thought it was "Tomas." Alfonso has an ancestor named Tomas, so they're not cousins after all.

Steve wrote the following to me by email:

The name was always Tamez or Tames. Spelling seems less standardized
in previous times and many of the records are handwritten so I wonder if
one penman's "z" was another penman's "s". The name was always given as one of the two spellings and was never anglicized. The great change came when my great, great-grandmother, Maria Francesca Tamez Rodriguez, moved to the United States with her husband and their oldest child. She simply became Frances Jones (at least to the Census taker); we have different naming conventions here.

The trace back to Llanes came in one of the books by Guillermo Garmendia Leal that I bought from Borderland Books in San Antonio, Texas. (www.borderlandsbooks.com --I notice that the website says they will close the retail bookstore and become strictly Internet).

Garmendia Leal seems pretty reliable so far; everything he has written where I have looked at the microfilm of the original records checks out. I'll have to get my stuff out and write it out for you.

I read somewhere (which I'll have to find) that essentially everyone
in Mexico and the USA named Tamez or Tames is descended from the Tamez who was born in Llanes about 1670 and moved to Mexico as a young man. The names are uncommon in the United States in 1990. The Census Bureau ranks Tamez as the 7363rd most common name and Tames as the 25050th most common name. If you go the www.census.gov/genealogy/www and click on the Spanish surname link there is a list of the 639 most common hispanic surnames on page 20 [of the original paper not in the pdf numbering system]. Tamez ranks 595 out of 639. The Tames spelling is too uncommon to list.

....

Actually, come to think of it, my mother swore up and down that the name was Tomas but she never saw it written down and was reconstructing it from her high school Spanish. She did talk to the granddaughter of the oldest child (who was born in Mexico) when she was a teenager. The grandaughter supposedly saw the actual marriage record in person but only told my mother about it verbally one night. When I looked at the microfilm I looked for the groom predicting that Jones would stand out like a sore thumb in Mexico (and it did).

[Terechu]

Haven't we had some posts on this surname before? If Steve's ancestors were from Llanes, then the name is Tamés. There are quite a few still left in the area around Porrúa.
There are many examples of names being misspelled by careless registrars or priests, and people losing track of their roots after a couple of generations.
As fashion has it, and just to make sure things get even more complicated, surnames that were spelled with a B for centuries (in my case: Abín and Cobián) are now being spelled with a "V"....

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No hemos tenido ya algún mensaje sobre este apellido? Si los antepasados de Steve eran de Llanes, entonces el apellido es Tamés. Todavía quedan bastantes por la zona de Porrúa.
Hay muchos ejemplos de apellidos escritos mal por secretarios de juzgado o sacristanes despreocupados, y de familias que perdieron sus raíces en un par de generaciones.
Lo último ahora, para procurar que la cosa no decaiga, es escribir con "V" los apellidos que durante siglos se escribieron con B (en mi caso Abín y Cobián).

[Art]

Yes, there was another message here:
http://www.asturianus.org/forum/viewtop ... =4963#4963

I separated this from the first post since it was more genealogical than about the Potomac Celtic Festival.

Today Steve wrote a message that seconds Terechu's thoughts on functionaries and their mistakes:

I looked things up and the other spelling which was used in the late 1600's was "Thames". I amuse myself by thinking that one of the branches of the family was an original, Celtic settler of England after whom a river was named but I think that it really just shows that standardized spelling is a modern compulsion. [In the old records...] The town of origin was spelled "Lanes" and not "Llanes" but I don't see anywhere else it could be. Someday I'll get back to the original source but for now I'm working back through the secondary sources.

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Sí, había otro mensaje aquí:
http://www.asturianus.org/forum/viewtop ... =4963#4963

Lo separé del primero mensaje por que es más genealógico que sobre el festival celta de Potomac.

Hoy Steve me escribio un mensage que that secunda los pensamientos de Terechu sobre los funcionarios and sus errores:

I looked things up and the other spelling which was used in the late 1600's was "Thames". I amuse myself by thinking that one of the branches of the family was an original, Celtic settler of England after whom a river was named but I think that it really just shows that standardized spelling is a modern compulsion. [In the old records...] The town of origin was spelled "Lanes" and not "Llanes" but I don't see anywhere else it could be. Someday I'll get back to the original source but for now I'm working back through the secondary sources.

[Bob]

I could certainly be wrong, but I think that "Lanes" represents a castellano version of the asturianu "Llanes." The pronunciation is reflected in the spelling. The asturianu is palatized, while the castellano is not.

[Myrna Cobian]

Terechu,
Es la primera vez que me expreso en este foro, y me gustaría saber de qué parte de Asturias es el Cobián del que hablas. Mi abuelo paterno, José Cobián González, era de Cadanes, Infiesto. Recién también he sabido que el apellido Cobián se escribió con "v". Estoy preparando mi árbol genealógico y he aprendido mucho en esta aventura. Mi abuelo emigró a Puerto Rico, se casó y formó familia aquí, pero visitó a Asturias en varias ocasiones. Saludos a todos los descendientes de Asturianos, y que nos sentimos muy honrados por ello!

[Terechu]

Hola Myrna y bienvenida!
No hay muchos Covián/Cobían, pero está claro que tienen todos un origen común en el pueblo de Covián (concejo de Colunga). La rama Cobián de mi familia eran de Nueva de Llanes. Si tienes en cuenta que Colunga está a 20 km de Ribadesella, a 30 km de Nueva y poco más o menos de Infiesto, verás que no fueron a casar muy lejos.

Puedes buscar por la guía telefónica, insertando el apellido
http://blancas.paginasamarillas.es/jsp/home.jsp

o buscar la incidencia de apellido por provincias en la página de Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE)
http://www.ine.es/fapel/FAPEL.INICIO

Un saludo

[arduguti]

En la parroquia de Ardisana de llanes también hay el apellido Tamés