The English meaning of Pardo is The color brown, drab, dark, cloudy, a flat, dull voice that has no clarity..
The name Pardo is of Portuguese,Spanish origin.
There are many indicators that the name Pardo 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 Pardo is cited with respect to Jews & Crypto-Jews in at least 26 bibliographical, documentary, or electronic references:
From the records of Bevis Marks, The Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London
Bevis Marks is the Sephardic synagogue in London. It is over 300 years old and is the oldest still in use in Britain.The Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation of London has published several volumes of its records: they can be found in libraries such as the Cambridge University Library or the London Metropolitan Archive
The register gives us dates for the burials in the "Bethahaim Velho" or Old Cemetery. The dates are listed as per the Jewish calendar.
History of the Jews in Venice, by Cecil Roth
In this work, Cecil Roth covers the long course of Italian-Jewish history extending from pre-Christian times, comprising in a degree every facet of the evolution of Jewish life in Europe. Contains a huge store of facts tracing regional variations over a period of 2000 years.
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 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.
Precious Stones of the Jews in Curaçao; Curaçaon Jewry 1656-1957, by Isaac Samuel Emmanuel (1957)
Names taken from 225 tombstones of 2536 persons, 1668 - 1859, men, women and some Rabbis. Includes cemetery history and plan, biographies including family histories, chronological list of names, alphabetical list of family names + number of members + eldest tombstone year, large bibliography, general alphabetical index, 15 genealogies.
List of (mostly) Sephardic brides 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.
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.
From the publication, "Los Sefardíes" (The Sephardim),by Jose M. Estrugo. Published by Editorial Lex La Habana, 1958.(Surnames common among the Sephardim)
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 area became known by the Hebrew word "Sepharad". The JEWS in SPAIN and PORTUGAL became known as "Sephardim" or and those things associated with the SEPHARDIM including names, customs, genealogy and religious rituals, became known as SEPHARDIC.
Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, by Miriam Bodian
This work explores why the Portuguese Jews of northern Europe never established a solid sense of belonging to the wider Sephardi diaspora. It explores how, historically, the Conversos lost the consciousness of being “Sephardi” in the generations after the expulsion from Spain and the mass baptism of Portugal’s Jews in 1497. To be sure, once the Portuguese ex-Conversos organized in Jewish communities, their leaders made efforts to reconnect with the wider Sephardi world, and these efforts had serious symbolic and strategic value. But the Portuguese Jews’ rootedness in the Converso experience meant that their core sense of collective self remained distinct. Contributing factors to their enduring sense of distinctness were these aspects of Converso experience: the absorption of Catholic notions of piety; the “de-rabbinization” of crypto-Jewish belief; and the difficulty for many Conversos of maintaining any stable set of traditional beliefs. The outward image their leaders sought to cultivate may have been one of Sephardi traditionalism, but, at an emotional level, members of these communities continued to regard themselves as members of the “nação”—a term that evoked the Converso past.
The Sephardim of England, by Albert M. Hyamson
A history of the Spanish & Portugese Jewish Community, 1492-1951.
A History of the Jews in Christian Spain,Volume 2, by Yitzhak Baer.
Traces the economic, social, legal and political life of the Spanish Jewish community from the 11th century re-conquest of Iberia from Muslim rule to the expulsion of 1492. Based on many years of study in the Spanish archives by a Professor from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.
A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel,by Cecil Roth.
This book contains names from the Sephardic community of greater Amsterdam. Amsterdam was a major haven and transfer point for Sephardim and Crypto-Jews leaving Iberia.
Die Sefarden in Hamburg (The Sephardim in Hamburg) by Michael Studemund-Halevy.
The Sephardic community of Hamburg was founded by Portuguese conversos who had settled in the Hamburg area during the three decades prior to 1611.
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.
Raizes Judaicas No Brasil,(Jewish Roots in Brazil) by Flavio Mendes de Carvalho.
This book contains names of New Christians or Brazilians living in Brazil condemned by the Inquisition in the 17th and 18th centuries, as taken from the archives of Torre do Tombo in Lisbon. Many times details including date of birth, occupation, name of parents, age, and location of domicile are also included. The list also includes the names of the relatives of the victims. There are several cases in which many members of the same family were tortured and sentenced so some family lines may end here.
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
From the civil records of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The Amsterdam Municipal Archives possess a complete set of registers of intended marriages from 1578 to 1811, the year when the present Civil Registry was started. Between 1598 and 1811, 15238 Jewish couples were entered in these books. Both the number of records and the volume of data that may be extracted from them are unprecedented.
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
This publication contains a list of 517 Sephardic families punished by the inquisition in Portugal and Brazil.
The Circumcision Register of Isaac and Abraham De Paiba (1715-1775) from the Archives of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation of Bevis Marks(London. England).
The circumcision register of Isaac and Abraham de Paiba (1715-1775): from the manuscript record preserved in the Archives of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation of London named "Sahar Asamaim" transcribed, translated and edited by the late R.D. Barnett, with the assistance of Alan Rose, I.D. Duque and others; There is also a supplement with a record of circumcisions 1679-1699, marriages 1679-1689 and some female births 1679-1699, compiled by Miriam Rodrigues-Pereira. The register includes surnames of those circumsized as well as the names of their Godfathers & Godmothers.
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.
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
Distinguished Jewish bearers of the Pardo name and its variants include : Tamir Pardo, Israeli. David Pardo, Rabbinical commentator and liturgical poet, 18 Century. Josiah Pardo, Chief Rabbi, Netherland, 17th Century.
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.
Some interesting facts about the name this name are : The website misapellidos.com mentions the Jewish origin of the name Pardo.The surname Pardo is derived from Prado in Castile. (Jewish Encyclopedia).
The following websites are relevant to the surname Pardo:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/search_results.jsp?searchType=1&pageNum=1&art_id=533&art_letter=L&search=Pardo&x=0&y=0&searchOpt=0
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