Silva

Silva is the Latin silva, a wood or a forest, and it belongs to a large class of Portuguese surnames, the locative names taken by people who lived beside or inside a particular kind of ground. Teixeira is a place of yew trees, Azevedo a holly wood. In modern Portuguese silva has narrowed to mean bramble, but the older sense is the one the family carried, and the full form is almost always da Silva, of the wood.

The first person the documents show using it is Dom Paio da Silva, lord of the Torre de Silva near Valença in what is now northern Portugal, and vicar, or representative, of King Alfonso VI of León and Castile. He signed several grants of land between 1085 and 1129, and every branch of the house that came after traces itself to him. The tower supplied the name, and the name supplied the house.

The grander pedigrees arrived later. Juan de Mena's Memorias de algunos linages antiguos e nobles de Castilla, written in the first half of the 15th century, called the Silva a very old and noble family and noblemen of high rank, reported a member of it fighting alongside Pelagius of Asturias, and carried a descent from the Latin kings of Alba Longa and so from Aeneas of Troy. Luis de Salazar y Castro repeated those traditions, and a descent from the royal house of Asturias, in his Historia genealógica de la Casa de Silva of 1685. The charters stop at Paio.

Gutierre Peláez de Silva (1030-1110), lord of Lugares and of the Torre de Silva, is named in Castilian and Portuguese genealogies alike as the forefather of the house. He went with Ferdinand the Great to the conquest of Coimbra in the war against the Moors, and is thought to have been at the taking of Córdoba in 1064 as well. He married María Pérez de Ambia and had a single son, Pelayo Gutiérrez de Silva.

Gomez Páez de Silva (1110-1170) fought at Campo de Ourique in 1139, and in 1160 he and his brother Pedro Páez de Silva served under the adelantado Gonzalo Mendez de Maya at Campos de Beja, where the Christian armies beat two Muslim armies on the same day. In 1166 he was given the dignity of count, at a time when the title was not yet hereditary and went to ricos hombres who ruled a seigniory or a territory of real weight. He held the castle of Santa Olaya and its lands as major alcalde, and was succeeded by his second son, Pelayo Gomez de Silva.

The heraldry records an older loyalty than the name does. Salazar noted that the Casa de Silva, like many in Spain, used a device very different from the name it was known by: a crimson lion rampant, gold-crowned, on a silver field, painted exactly as the kings of León, Oviedo and Galicia painted theirs. He credited Count Gomez Páez de Silva with taking it up in the 12th century to record the house's descent from the royal house of León. A family named for a wood has never carried a tree on its shield.

A branch established itself in the Crown of Castile after Arias Gomes de Silva was named Prince of Córdoba. His son Alfonso Tenorio Silva married into the gentry of that city until the Silva were among the most powerful families in it, and served in the courts of successive Trastámara monarchs. Younger branches of the family were lords of Montemayor and of Corral.

Alfonso's son Juan de Silva y Meneses Noronha was born in Toledo in 1399, his mother Guiomar de Meneses Noronha. He was made major ensign of the kingdom of Castile in 1433, and the following year went to the Council of Basel, where those attending judged him wise and trustworthy. He is recorded there rebuking the English legates who had taken seats they had no dignity to take, with the sentence 'no posa quien mal posa', which is still the motto of the house. In April 1456 he was created first Count of Cifuentes; he died on 27 September 1464.

The county then ran down a long line: Alfonso de Silva y Acuña, Juan de Silva y Rodríguez de Castañeda, Fernando de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo (d. 1546), Juan de Silva y Andrade (d. 1556) and Fernando de Silva y de Monroy (d. 1590). The seventh count, Juan Baltasar de Silva y de la Cerda (1581-1602), left no children, so the title went to his sister Ana, born in Milan in 1587 and countess in her own right. Later holders included Fernando Jacinto de Silva Padilla y Meneses (1606-1644), first Marquis of Alconchel, and Pedro José de Silva, captain general of the kingdom of Granada, governor of Orán and Mazalquivir and viceroy of Valencia.

In Portugal one branch of the family came to hold Vagos, Tentúgal and Buarcos. João Gomes da Silva, lord of Vagos, was appointed alféres-mor of Portugal in 1416; from the line of his brother Diogo Gomes da Silva came the Silvas who would rise at the court of Philip II of Spain.

Beatrice de Silva was born at Campo Maior in 1426, daughter of Ruy Gomes da Silva, the first governor of the town, and of Isabella de Menezes, countess of Portalegre. In 1447 she was lady-in-waiting to Isabella of Aviz, queen of Castile and granddaughter of King John I of Portugal. She entered a convent in 1454 and founded the religious Order of the Immaculate Conception, the Franciscan Conceptionists. She died at Toledo on 9 August 1492, and Pope Paul VI inscribed her in the catalogue of the saints on 3 October 1976.

Her brother João Mendes da Silva e Menezes, born at Campo Maior in 1420, took the name Amadeu in religion and set about reforming the Franciscan order from inside it, founding in 1464 the Congregation of the Amadeiti on a strict observance of the Franciscan rule. He died in Milan on 10 August 1482, and the congregation was later joined to the Observant Friars Minor so that the order would not divide. One town produced both of them, a saint and a blessed, in the same household.

Ruy Gómez de Silva was born at Chamusca in the kingdom of Portugal on 27 October 1516, son of Francisco de Silva y Enriquez de Noronha, and became the most trusted man at the court of Philip II of Spain: Prince of Éboli, first Duke of Pastrana, Duke of Estremera, Count of Melito and Grandee of Spain. He set himself against the centralist, interventionist politics of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, third Duke of Alba, and he was a protector of the Arab minority in Spain. He died in Madrid on 29 July 1573.

In 1552, on the king's advice, he married Ana de Mendoza de la Cerda y de Silva Cifuentes, born at Cifuentes on 29 June 1540, daughter of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y de la Cerda, viceroy of Aragon. She was twelve years old, and she bore him ten children. Reckoned one of the most powerful and richest women in Europe, she carried real political weight at Philip's court, stood in sharp opposition to the house of Álvarez de Toledo, and gave her name to what was called the Ebolista party.

After her husband's death she is said to have plotted with Antonio Pérez, the king's secretary, to separate the kingdom of Portugal from Spain and set her son Diego on its throne. The plan was discovered and she was confined in the tower of her own palace at Pastrana, where she died on 2 February 1592. Two of her sons founded lines that outlasted the quarrel: Rodrigo (1562-1596), second Duke of Pastrana, whose marriage to Ana de Portugal y Borja began the De Silva Portugal line, and Diego, first Marquess of Alenquer, who began the De Silva Alenquer.

Diego de Silva y Mendoza (1564-1630) was Count of Salinas and Ribadeo, third Duke of Francavilla and first Marquess of Alenquer, the title that made him a Grandee of the kingdom of Portugal. His mother favoured him over his elder brother Rodrigo and contrived to have him inherit the Italian dukedom of Francavilla from his grandfather Diego Hurtado.

He was sent on missions of state by Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV, appointed captain general of Andalusia in 1588, and governed Portugal as viceroy from 1615 to 1622. He was also a poet of the Spanish Siglo de Oro of the rank of Luis de Góngora, and his verse has kept its editors and scholars into the 20th and 21st centuries.

His son Rodrigo de Silva Mendoza y Sarmiento, born in Madrid in 1600, became second Marquess of Alenquer and Count of Salinas, and Duke of Híjar by the decree of his wife Isabel Margarita Fernández de Híjar, fifth duchess in her own right. He held a command in the Portuguese War of Restoration, was made general in chief of the armies of Aragon in 1640, and was a political antagonist of the count-duke of Olivares. Banished from Philip IV's court and charged over the attempted coup of Carlos Padilla, which aimed to detach Aragon and put the Duke of Híjar on its throne, he was imprisoned and never admitted guilt. He died in the castle at León in 1664.

Isidoro de Silva Portugal y Carvayal (1643-1682) was Marquess of Orani, lord of the baronies of Monovar, Mur and Sollana and of Nuoro, Bitti and the Gallura in Sardinia, chamberlain of the king and knight commander of the Order of Alcántara. He was appointed admiral of the Spanish galleys and, a few years later, general commander of the Sardinian galley fleet. At his death his wife Agustina Fernández Portocarrero Guzmán succeeded him as regent of the marquisate.

The two lines joined in Juana Petronila de Silva Fernández de Híjar (1669-1710), lady-in-waiting to Queen María of Orléans, who succeeded her father Jaime Francisco Víctor Sarmiento de Silva (1625-1700), sixth Duke of Híjar and viceroy of Aragon from 1681 to 1697. She was seventh Duchess of Híjar, Lecera and Aliaga. Her marriage on 5 December 1688 to her cousin Fadrique de Silva Portugal y Portocarrero brought the marquisate of Orani into the ducal house, and her eldest son Isidro Francisco Fadrique (1690-1749) was eighth Duke of Híjar and the first to hold the full name De Silva Fernández de Híjar Portugal.

The house inherits by matrilineal descent, under a concession granted by Ferdinand the Catholic in 1483 covering the legally recognised natural children of kings. José Rafael de Silva Fernández de Híjar (1776-1863) was thirteenth Duke of Híjar and seven times a Grandee of Spain, grand master of the royal household of Ferdinand VII, given the order of the Toison de Oro on 15 November 1829 and present at the battle of Trocadero on 31 August 1823. In the 20th century María del Rosario de Silva Fernández de Híjar (1900-1934) married Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart (1878-1953), ninth Duke of Berwick and seventeenth Duke of Alba, and the Híjar titles went with her into that house.

The name went out with the ships and with the ordinary emigration that followed them. Pedro da Silva is recorded as the first post courier of Canada, in the 17th and 18th centuries; José da Silva Pais served as a Portuguese soldier. In Spain, Mariana de Silva-Bazán y Sarmiento (1739-1784) was an aristocrat, a writer, a painter and a translator. The name is common in Galicia, and Portuguese emigration to France made Silva the fifth most common surname in the department of Val-de-Marne and the nineteenth most common family name given to newborns in France between 1966 and 1990.

In Brazil the numbers are of another order. Silva is the most common surname in the country, borne by 34,030,104 people, 16.76 per cent of the population, or roughly one Brazilian in six. The concentration is highest in the Northeast, where 35.75 per cent of Alagoas and 34.23 per cent of Pernambuco carry it and about one inhabitant in four in Maranhão and Piauí; in Acre it is 27.74 per cent. São Paulo holds more Silvas than any other state, over 5.9 million, and Santa Catarina at 8.06 per cent has the lowest proportion in the country.

Portuguese settlement carried the name across the Atlantic, but settlement is not the whole account of why it is so common there. Until abolition, enslaved people in Brazil had personal names and no surnames, and were christened with Portuguese given names; when they were freed it was common practice to name them after their former owners. Indigenous people who were not enslaved took the surnames of their godparents. Surnames that were already very common, Silva and Costa among them, were the ones given out most often, and that is why Silva stands at the head of the Brazilian register.

The particle is no guide to any of it. Silva, da Silva, de Silva and e Silva are the same name, and Portuguese practice files them all under S: Luiz Pereira da Silva is Senhor Silva, never Senhor da Silva. Some Italian families in Brazil changed a name such as Salviani to Silva as they assimilated. The Torre de Silva at Valença is a long way behind all of that.