The Catálogo alfabético de apellidos (English: Alphabetical Catalog of Surnames) is a book of surnames published in the Philippines in the mid-19th century. This was in response to a Spanish colonial decree establishing the systematic distribution of family names and the imposition of the Spanish naming system on the inhabitants of the Philippines.
The book was created after Spanish Captain and Governor General Narciso ClaverÃ*a y Zaldúa issued a decree on November 21, 1849, in response to the inconsistencies in the way Filipinos arbitrarily chose surnames. Following the Christianisation of the Philippines, many Filipinos chose surnames such as de los Santos, de la Cruz, del Rosario, and Bautista for their religious significance; even today these surnames are perhaps the most common. Many other Filipinos also chose surnames of well-known chieftains such as Lacandola. Furthermore, many people within the same family had different surnames. This created difficulties for the Spanish colonial authorities, who found that it hindered their ability to perform a census of the archipelago's inhabitants, as well as complicating the collection of taxes.
The book itself consists of 141 pages. The surnames are arranged in 6 columns with at most 72 surnames per column. Despite the title, the surnames are not strictly listed alphabetically (after Gandain is Ganavacas then Gandoy, and Balledor is listed under "V").
All of the letters of the Spanish alphabet are represented except for the letters "I" (in the Spanish orthography of the time "Y" was used instead of an initial "I"), "K" and "W" (non-existent in the Spanish alphabet) and "X" (due to a consonant shift, earlier surnames like Ximénez were spelled Jiménez, with a J, by that time.)



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