The English meaning of Fuentes is Fountain.
The name Fuentes is of Spanish origin.
There are many indicators that the name Fuentes may be of Jewish origin, emanating from the Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
When the Romans conquered the Jewish nation in 70 CE, much of the Jewish population was sent into exile throughout the Roman Empire. Many were sent to the Iberian Peninsula. The approximately 750,000 Jews living in Spain in the year 1492 were banished from the country by royal decree of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Jews of Portugal, were banished several years later. Reprieve from the banishment decrees was promised to those Jews who converted to Catholicism. Though some converted by choice, most of these New-Christian converts were called CONVERSOS or MARRANOS (a derogatory term for converts meaning pigs in Spanish), ANUSIM (meaning "coerced ones" in Hebrew) and CRYPTO-JEWS, as they secretly continued to practice the tenets of the Jewish faith.
Our research has found that the family name Fuentes is cited with respect to Jews & Crypto-Jews in at least 12 bibliographical, documentary, or electronic references:
The Inquisitors and the Jews in the New World, by Seymour B. Liebman. Reports the names of people who appeared before the inquisition in the New Spain
Except for a brief introduction, the entire book is a listing of Inquisition Records in the New World. This is a source for converso names in the New World.
List of (mostly) Sephardic grooms from the publication, "List of 7300 Names of Jewish Brides and Grooms who married in Izmir Between the Years 1883-1901 & 1918-1933". By Dov Cohen.
Dov Cohen has created an index of brides and grooms based on the organization of Ketubot (Jewish wedding contracts) from marriages within the Turkish community of Izmir. From this material we can identify the Jewish families who lived in Turkey since the Spanish expulsion in 1492 in two periods: the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the secular government of Turkish Republic. Events of these periods forced this community to emigrate to America.
History of the Sephardic Israelite Community in Chile by Moshe Nes-El. Editorial Nascimiento, Chile, 1984.
Most Jews arrived in Chile between 1934–1946, half being from Eastern Europe, 40 percent from Germany, and 10 percent were Sephardic Jews. Many Chilean Jews fled Chile in 1970 after the election of socialist Salvador Allende Gossens as president.
Judios Conversos (Jewish Converts) by Mario Javier Saban. Distal, Buenos Aires, 1990. The ancestors of the Argentinian Jewish families.
This best-selling work traces the immigration of Conversos from Portugal to Argentina and Brazil. It contains many Sephardic names and family trees within its 3 volumes. Many of the individuals listed appeared before the Inquisition and were secret Jews. Some later converted and intermarried. Many of the names listed here represent the famous names of Jewish/Sephardic Argentina. Over 100 pages of genealogies, well detailed, are provided.
Sangre Judia (Jewish Blood) by Pere Bonnin. Flor de Viento, Barcelona, 2006. A list of 3,500 names used by Jews, or assigned to Jews by the Holy Office (la Santo Oficio) of Spain. The list is a result of a census of Jewish communities of Spain by the Catholic Church and as found in Inquisition records.
Pere Bonnin, a philosopher, journalist and writer from Sa Pobla (Mallorca), a descendant of converted Jews, settles with this work a debt "owed to his ancestors", in his own words. The book, written in a personal and accessible style and based on numerous sources, includes a review of basic Jewish concepts, Jewish history in Spain, and Christian Anti-Semitism. There is also a section that focuses on the reconciliation between the Church and Monarchy and the Jews, which took place in the 20th Century. In this study, Bonnin deals in depth with the issue of surnames of Jewish origin. In the prologue, the author explains the rules he followed in the phonetic transcription of surnames of Hebrew origin that are mentioned in the book. The researcher cites the Jewish origin, sometimes recognized and other times controversial, of historically prominent figures (like Cristobal Colon, Hernan Cortes, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and many others) and links between surnames of Jewish origin with some concepts in Judaism.. The book also includes an appendix with more than three thousands surnames "suspected" of being Jewish, because they appear in censuses of the Jewish communities and on the Inquisitorial lists of suspected practitioners of Judaism, as well as in other sources. In the chapter "Una historia de desencuentro", the author elaborates on surnames of Jewish origin of the royalty, nobility, artistocracy, clergy, and also of writers, educators and university teachers during the Inquisition. Special attention is given to the "Chuetas" of Mallorca, the birthplace of the author.
ETSI (a Paris-based, bilingual French-English periodical) is devoted exclusively to Sephardic genealogy and is published by the Sephardi Genealogical and Historical Society (SGHS). It was founded by Dr. Philip Abensur, and his professional genealogist wife, Laurence Abensur-Hazan. ETSI's worldwide base of authors publish articles identifying a broad spectrum of archival material of importance to the Sephardic genealogist. A useful feature of ETSI is the listing, on the back cover, of all Sephardic family names, and places of origin, cited in the articles contained in each issue
Finding Our Fathers: A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy, by Dan Rottenberg
In this work Dan Rottenberg shows how to do a successful search for probing the memories of living relatives, by examining marriage licenses, gravestones, ship passenger lists, naturalization records, birth and death certificates, and other public documents, and by looking for clues in family traditions and customs. Supplementing the "how to" instructions is a guide to some 8,000 Jewish family names, giving the origins of the names, sources of information about each family, and the names of related families whose histories have been recorded. Other features included a country-by-country guide to tracing Jewish ancestors abroad, a list of Jewish family history books, and a guide to researching genealogy.
The Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux, by Frances Malino
Describing the tensions that existed between the Sephardic community of Bordeaux and the Ashkenazic Jews of France, the author also depicts their role in the relation of the Jews with Napoleon and the forming of the Grand Sanhedrin
The Principality of Asturias (Spanish: Principado de Asturias - Asturian: Principáu d'Asturies) is an autonomous community within the kingdom of Spain, former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages. It is situated on the Spanish North coast facing the Cantabrian Sea (Mar Cantábrico, the Spanish name for the Bay of Biscay). The most important cities are the provincial capital, Oviedo, the seaport and largest city Gijón, and the industrial town of Avilés. No one knows the exact date at which Jews arrived in Asturias. Based solely on the documentation found so far in Asturias, there are clear references to the mid-eleventh century Council of Coyanza held in the Diocese of Oviedo in 1050 which states in Chapter VI: "... no Christian shall live in the same house with Jews or eat with them; if anyone infringes our constitution, they shall do penance for seven days, and if not willing to do it, being a noble person, they shall be deprived of communion for a full year, and if an inferior person they will receive a hundred lashes." But it is in the twelfth century when the rise and importance of the Jewish people is more noticeable in this region. Jewish witness signatures begin to appear more often on donation pledge cards from 1133. Asturias names are not very common among the Jewish population in other parts of the peninsula around the same time, perhaps causing confusion.
Dicionario Sefaradi De Sobrenomes (Dictionary of Sephardic Surnames), G. Faiguenboim, P. Valadares, A.R. Campagnano, Rio de Janeiro, 2004
A bilingual (Portugese/English)reference book of Sephardic surnames. Includes New Christians, Conversos, Crypto-Jews (Marranos), Italians, Berbers and their history in Spain, Portugal and Italy. Contains over 16,000 surnames presented under 12000 entries, with hundreds of rare photographs, family shields and illustrations.It also contains a 72-page summary of Sephardic history, before and after the expulsion from Spain and Portugal, as well as a 40-page linguistic essay about Sephardic names, including an interesting list of the 250 most frequent Sephardic surnames. The period covered by the dictionary is of 600 years, from the 14th to the 20th century, and the area covered includes Spain and Portugal, France, Italy, Holland, England, Germany, Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, the former Ottoman Empire, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, North America, Central America and the Caribbean, South America and more.
This list is compiled from a catalogue the author found on a visit to Puerto Rico in the Museum of San Juan.
List of names of forcibly converted Jews who were tried by the Spanish Inquisition for practicing Judaism in Mexico in the years 1528 - 1815
Around the 12th century, surnames started to become common in Iberia. In Spain, where Arab-Jewish influence was significant, these new names retained their old original structure, so that many of the Jewish surnames were of Hebrew derivation. Others were directly related to geographical locations and were acquired due to the forced wanderings caused by exile and persecution. Other family names were a result of conversion, when the family accepted the name of their Christian sponsor. In many cases, the Portuguese Jews bear surnames of pure Iberian/Christian origin. Many names have been changed in the course of migration from country to country. In yet other cases "aliases", or totally new names, were adopted due to fear of persecution by the Inquisition.
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