Moniz+Family+Surname


 * __First-Person/Inquiry Application__**

My father’s side of the family is polar opposite to my mother’s when dealing with family names and passing down of family information. My mother’s side just recently completed a family history of my grandfather’s lineage dating back several hundred years; meanwhile my father barely knows anything about his own parents’ upbringing. There was a time when I confronted him about his family’s history and he had a difficult time recalling how his parents even met. There is a plaque in the foyer of the house of my childhood that contains an official document stating the origin and meaning of our name //Moniz//. I read it a long time ago and only recall that our name originated in Portugal and has several translations in other countries: Munoz, Munez, Muniz, Nunez. The first search I did lead me to the //Moniz Family Crest and History.// I was going to quickly regard it as being rubbish until I saw that the variations of our name were identical to the ones I read in my parents’ home. On top of this discovery, I learned that the first //Moniz// to come over to America was named //Francisco Moniz//, who arrived on the Spanish Main in 1836, and shares the same name as my grandfather. I also saw the coat of arms that is similar to the plaque in my childhood home. Although the name is considered Portuguese, it seems to have started in the mountains of Spain and was originally considered to be purely of prestigious Spanish descent. Turns out that our name means “dweller at or near the mountains”.

I stumbled across another website that was extremely interesting to read about. It is a forum for people who have the last name //Moniz// to discuss the information they have on our family line as they try to piece it all together. From this site alone I can conclude that I am directly apart of it. Not only is there a reoccurrence of first names from my direct family being mentioned in this forum, but they are primarily located where my grandparents live in New England. I’ve come to learn that one of the earliest to come to America in our family had a very successful farmland in the Massachusetts area; hence, why so many of my family members can be traced back to this area.

On another website, I found that there may have been a reason for so many different variations of our name. Not because they all mean something different, but that they may have been just misspellings of //Moniz//, as so many people during the 1800s were not highly educated.

//How this activity can be used in the classroom….// I can see how this type of activity can be used in the language arts classroom to focus on characterization comparison between individuals in a book. Although, I can see how this activity would be more utilized in a Social Studies classroom. It

Citations: Arrington, S. (1999, December 9). Moniz family genealogy forum [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://genforum.genealogy.com/moniz/

//Moniz family history and genealogy//. (2012). Retrieved from Arrington, S. (1999, December 9). Moniz family genealogy forum [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from

Swyrich Corporation. (2012). //Moniz family crest and name history//. Retrieved from http://www.houseofnames.com/moniz-family-crest