ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2584
http://www.s-gabriel.org/2584
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27 Dec 2002
From: Raquel Buenaventura 


Greetings from the Academy of St. Gabriel!

You wrote to us asking whether <Esperanza de Zaragosa> 
would be a good recreation of a woman's name from 
sixteenth-century Spain.

Here's what we've found out: <Esperanza>, as a woman's given 
name, does not appear in any of our sources for Spain before 
1600. We have, however, found two examples of <Esperanc,a> 
in a Portuguese source from 1565. [1] It is possible that this 
name might also have been used in Spain, although it seems to 
be somewhat rare, and might have been used only in Portugal. 

We do not have an example of the name spelled <Esperanza>, 
but we think it is a reasonable alternative: The common Castilian 
word  <esperanc,a> "hope" was spelled with a 'z' 41% of the time 
by 16th century writers [2]; the two letters represented the same 
sound in 16th century Castilian.

Surnames based on place names, like <de Zaragosa>, were 
very common in your culture.  We haven't actually found 
someone named <de  Zaragosa>, but it's still a fine choice.  The 
name of the city was spelled <Zaragoza> at the end of the 15th 
century [3], so you may want to consider using that spelling.

In conclusion, we have not found <Esperanza> used outside of 
Portugal, but believe it is a possible name for a Spanish woman 
living in the sixteenth century. <de Zaragoza> is an excellent 
surname for your time and place.
 
I hope that this letter has been helpful. Please do not hesitate to 
write again if any part of it was unclear, or if you have other 
questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter 
by Maridonna Benvenuti, Galiana de Baiona, Talan Gwynek, 
Adelaide de Beaumont, Arval Benicoeur, Juliana de Luna, Julie 
Stampnitzky, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Falk vom Weserbogen, 
Alan Fairfax, Elizabeth Anne Roth, Pedro de Alcazar, Leonor 
Martin and Laurensa de Chambord.

For the Academy,
Raquel Buenaventura
December 26, 2002
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[1] Friedemann, Sara L. "Portuguese Names from Lisbon, 1565" 
(WWW: Self-published, 2002) 
http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/lisbon1565.html  

[2] Real Academia Espan~ola - Corpus Diacro/nico del 
Espan~ol (CORDE),
http://corpus.rae.es/cordenet.html, research by Leonor Martin.
 
[3] Montalvo, Antonio Serrano. _La Poblacio/n de Arago/n segu/n 
el Fogaje de 1495_. 2 vols. (Zaragoza: Institucio/n Fernando el 
Cato/lico; Gobierno de Aragon; Instituto Aragone/s de Estadi/stic,
1995). p.1