What's in a name?

I recall that when I was young it seemed that everyone had or used a name other than their given name. My uncles and aunts in particular had different and strange appellations. On my mother's side there were uncles - Beadie (Bill), Muggs (Allen) and Buster (Tony). Mom was Sis. On my father's side there were uncles (in Spanish "titos") - Paco (Frank) and Nino (Manuel) and aunts (in Spanish "titas") - Carmen (never called anything but Carmen), Maizie (Maria), Josie (Josefina) and Babs (Dolores). In fact, we had two tita Carmens, each of whom was married to a tito Frank. One was a Ribera, the other a Perregrina. My maternal grandmother (Mary) was called Maggie by her family. My paternal grandmother (Consuelo) was just 'uelita, which is a close as I could come to abuelita, or little grandmother.



Our family name is not really Ribera, but Rivera. I heard several tales about how that change came about. Here is the one that was most often repeated and is possibly true. Grandpa Ribera, Francisco, who died 10 years before I was born, was a skilled carpenter in Spain. When he first came to the U.S. in 1915 he worked on many of the fine homes in Portola Valley and Hillsborough. To take care of his sizeable family (7 kids) he also worked in the local cement quarry where he contracted lung disease that made him an invalid for the final years of his life. At the quarry they paid the workers in alphabetical order and the story is he changed the spelling of his name so that he would get paid before the other men named Rivera. Well, that's just one story.



Not well known outside the affected families is the manner in which many Spaniards came to California in the early part of the 20th century. Because of the strict quotas on immigration of undesirables from Southern Europe, including Spain and Italy, many rejected the arduous path through Ellis Island and came across the Pacific and through the Hawaiian Islands. At that time Hawaii was a U.S. territory. A family could indenture (contract) themselves to a Hawaiian plantation owner for five years to work in the cane fields. At the end of the indentured period they would (1) be free of their labor commitment and (2) have established residency, which would permit them to relocate to the mainland without going through immigration. I've met many Californians of Spanish ancestry whose families had that same experience.