Maria Preciliana Telesfora de Jesus Maria y Jose Salazar. Quite the moniker if I do say so myself. Preciliana, as she was known was born the 4th of January in 1827 in Tome, New Mexico to Jose Antonio Salazar and Maria de la Luz Jiminez.
Her baptismal or given name even had two (2) Maria's.
Preciliana married a man by the name of Jesus Maria Luna, the son of Jose Enrique Luna and Juana Maria Gabaldon. Preciliana and Jesus had one son, Patrocinio Luna born on the 9th of November on 1843. Jesus Maria Luna died right around the time his son was born as Preciliana was remarried on October 26 1845 to husband number two, a guy named Jose de Jesus Romero with whom she would have at least an additional four (4) children.
So she Married 1) Jesus Maria Luna and 2) Jose de Jesus Romero.
Notice that she and her first husband shared two names Jesus and Maria. With her second husband she shared another two names Jose and Jesus.
This naming of folks after the "holy family" and especially the "savior" himself really upset Americans as they started the occupation of the New Mexico. The Protestant religious leaders that came in as the occupation took hold saw this as sacrilegious. This was especially true if the guy was named Jesus and was an idiot, or worse, some type of a criminal.
Everyone, or so it seemed, was named either Jose, Maria, Jesus, Juana or all of the above.
Time wise, we are a ways from that now that everyone is assimilated to the degree that we are. I do not think we will see anyone like Preciliana anymore.
1 comment:
Interesting post NM. I have a bias against long names based on the idea that it's pretentious to take up more real estate than everyone else, but I have admit those long Hispanic names are beautiful sounding contrivances.
Another way of looking at my bias might be: But why am I in such a hurry? Slow down. Relax. Churn some butter. Need some socks? Start raising a sheep and reading books about spinning and weaving.
It raises the question though. Why do we have names? I suppose it's to differentiate and label each person, but we could do that with numbers or letters or colors or any of the various ways we label and differentiate other things. A name is like putting a sign on a door, rather than just painting the door green.
The names we use put a "spin" on the person that influences, maybe even helps in identity formation, I suppose, and the name's "reputation" among the populace in general follows the person for life. Is that why do we do it?
What do people think about when they name their kids? I didn't have kids but my ex and I had various pets and I would procrastinate naming them as I intellectualized it like I do in this comment. My ex would name it then, seemingly the first thing that popped into her head. It was things like that that made me not want to have kids with her. What if she had had four kids at once and named them John, Paul, George and Ringo?
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