Chilean Surnames: Origin and History

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Are the Graniffo and Riffo families Italian? Why did three sisters in colonial Chile carry three different surnames? What does Nanjarí have to do with Liñán de Ariza?

Behind every surname there is a story: that of a 16th-century conquistador, a cacique who kept the name of his lineage, an enslaved man who was given his master's name, a child of unknown father raised in someone else's home, or a scribe who wrote down what he heard. This book tells how surnames were born, how they reached Chile and how they changed on their way to us.

The second part covers the 50 most common surnames in Chile, with their origin, variants and founders.

Cristián Cofré León · 1540 Ediciones · Paperback with flaps · 296 pages · 15.2 × 22.9 cm · ISBN 978-956-03-1390-4 · Book in Spanish