Apellido: Renaming the Nation

Why do so many Filipinos have Spanish surnames? This episode unpacks the story of the Catálogo Alfabético de Apellidos, a book distributed in 1849 by Spanish Governor-General Narciso Clavería to solve an administrative crisis. We explore how this single decree systematically renamed millions, assigning surnames alphabetically by town and creating regional naming patterns that still exist. We also debunk the persistent myth of widespread Spanish ancestry, i.e., contrasting the 90% of Filipinos with Spanish surnames against genetic studies showing only 1-3% Spanish DNA, and tell the dramatic story of how this decree led to the persecution of Jose Rizal's mother.