Morphological construction patterns of surnames in Portugal

Abstract

The present text aims to describe the genolexical patterns most represented in the anthroponymic construction of surnames in Modern European Portuguese (PE), filling the gap in this domain of lexical formation. In this way, it becomes possible to complement the remarkable knowledge available about Portuguese surnames in the medieval period (Soledade 2012) and about the configuration of family names over time, whether in the history of the European Portuguese (Vasconcellos 1928, Monteiro 2008, Silvestre 2021) or in that of the Brazilian Portuguese (Rodrigues 2016; Simões Neto & Soledade, 2018). After a brief presentation of the theoretical-methodological framework that holds this research (section 1.), section 2 displays the configurational schemes in which Portuguese surnames are inserted and section 3. is devoted to their most salient themes. The morphological patterns of European Portuguese surname's construction, namely those involving derivation, composition, pluralization, and (de)patronymic suffixation, are described in section 4. The conclusions are presented in the final section. The analysis of empirical data (collected in https://nosportugueses.pt/pt/apelidos/, a specific database accessible online), still documented in the XX Century, reveals that there is no dissociation between the genolexical patterns of surname construction and those of the common language, in derivation as well as in composition. The most recruited affix resources are those that best codify the thematic-conceptual motivations that govern the construction of surnames, namely in the domain of suffix evaluation or in that of "relation" suffixes.

Keywords

• onomastics
• Portuguese language
• surnames
• derivational morphology