An approach to the study anthroponomy in Upper Peru during the colonial period from the 16th to the 18th century

Abstract

The history of forenames has notably been studied in Spain (Simón Parra, 2008; García-Gallarín, 1998) and in some areas of the American continent such as in Mexico (Boyd-Bowman, 1970; San Martín Gómez y Zabalza Seguín, 2021), El Salvador, and Honduras (San Martín Gómez, 2021a, 2021b). However, the study of forenames is fairly new in other areas such as in South America except for the study done on Humahuaca (Díaz Martínez, 2003), where the study of this topic has been given limited attention by other researchers in the language. For this very reason, the following paper pretends to give information about the history of anthroponymy in Upper Peru from notarial documentation of the 16h to the 18h century edited by Mendoza (2000).

In this way, the fundamental objectives of this study will be the following: a) to understand the trends that the anthroponymy of Upper Peru between the 16th and 18th centuries; b) to analyse whether there are trends in the use of the name according to social class; c) to compare any trends in the use of Upper Peruvian forenames with other Hispanic areas during these centuries to establish their similarities and differences; and d) to identify possible lines of future research that would contribute to a deeper study and enrich the knowledge of the history of the forenames in this area.

KEY WORDS: History of Spanish in America, Upper Peru, colonial period, anthroponymy, notarised documents.