Puerto Rican Surnames with Taíno & African Roots: Origins in Ponce, Juana Díaz & the Southern Highlands

Literanista December 1, 2025

If like me, you descend from Puerto Rico’s south, sometimes following the paper trail of your family history gets complicated. Sketchy dates, conflicting details, then he names you thought were “just Spanish” start revealing stories that unfamiliar to you. A baptism, a burial, an 1815 padrino list from the local parish, each one hints at the truth that the island’s bloodlines are far beyond just European.

If you trace your ancestry through Ponce, Juana Díaz, Coamo, or the Cordillera Central highlands, your family tree like mine, is carrying something older, deeper, and more resilient than colonial paperwork ever allowed.

It is carrying Taíno survival and African resistance, encoded as surnames.

This is the story many of us were never taught. The evidence was always there in the names themselves.

The Myth of “Purely Spanish” Surnames in the South of Puerto Rico

I grew up believing, like many Nuyoricans, that my ancestors with clearly Spanish surnames (Pérez, Ramos, Torres, Santiago, Maldonado, García, Hernández) were simply from Spain. The kind of story we cling to when our islands were carved by empire.

But when you begin digging, when you start looking back through the 1800s parish books from Juana Díaz or the 1830s baptisms in Ponce, when you start seeing the race labels (pardo, moreno, mulato, india, trigueña), you realize something intensely important:

The surnames were clearly Spanish but some of the people carrying them were not. The surnames belonged to families who were:

Indigenous women who refused erasure.
African women who survived enslavement and made freedom happen through their descendants.
Free people of color who built multiracial communities long before abolition.

Ponce and Juana Díaz were never racially simple places but rather crossroads. Meeting places transcending mainstream narratives and time. Frontiers between:

Taíno-majority mountain villages,
rural Afro–Puerto Rican communities, and
Spanish and Canary Islander settlers and soldiers.

Their surnames tell the story.

Surnames with Documented Taíno & Indigenous Lineage

(Ponce | Juana Díaz | Coamo | Cordillera Central)

These families often appear in the records as:

india / indio
mestiza / mestizo
trigueña / trigueño
parda (in some places)

They represent Indigenous survival in the south and central mountains.

Torres

Common in San Sebastián, Las Marías, Lares, Añasco, and later in coastal Ponce.

Torres families were labeled mestizos, trigueños, and pardos libres, suggesting strong Indigenous maternal lines.

Ramos

Found across Ponce, Juana Díaz, and Coamo, often marked as mulato or trigueño.

Many Ramos families descended from rural Taíno communities outside Coamo and Barranquitas.

Vega

Associated with mountain jíbaro communities. Appears frequently in Indigenous-descended villages and alongside Torres.

Colón

Often linked to Indigenous maternal lines in the mountains as well as free African lines, one of the most interwoven surnames on the island.

Montalvo

Strongly tied to Coamo and Juana Díaz. Records show recurring trigueño, mestizo, and india descriptors, marking Taíno and mixed ancestry.

Hernández

A widespread surname but in Ponce’s rural barrios (Tibes, Machuelo Arriba, Portugués) it is heavily associated with Indigenous and mixed families.

Santiago

A key surname among free people of color; found in communities with Indigenous and African ancestry.

Surnames with Documented African & Afro–Puerto Rican Heritage

(Ponce | Juana Díaz | Guayama | Santa Isabel)

These surnames appear heavily in:

pardo, moreno, mulato entries
free Black communities like San Antón (Ponce)
rural sugar hacienda records
baptismal books showing African maternal lines

García

In Ponce and the south, García was heavily associated with free Black and mixed families. Many García women were recorded as mujer de color, mulata libre, or negra libre.

Pérez

While a common Spanish surname, southern Pérez families were overwhelmingly free people of color. Appears frequently in Ponce’s pardo libre category.

Serrano

Shows up often among laborers, jíbaros of mixed African heritage, and free Black communities.

Correa

Long-standing Afro–Puerto Rican surname found in sugar and coffee zones as well as free rural communities.

Valentín

Appears repeatedly among free men and women of African descent in Ponce, Yauco, and southern towns.

Ortiz

Heavily mixed families with African ancestry, particularly in Ponce and Villalba.

Surnames with Strong Mixed (Taíno + African + Spanish) Lineages

The “Tri-Racial Heart” of Southern Puerto Rico

These families often carried multiple ancestries blended over centuries:

Maldonado

Not simply Spanish. In Coamo, Juana Díaz, and Ponce, Maldonado families often married into Indigenous and African lines. Early records show them as pardo, mulato, trigueño, or mestizo.

Morales

Common in southern Indigenous-descended communities. Many Morales women appear as mestiza or india trigueña in 1700s–1800s records. Others mixed with African maternal lines.

Liñán / Liñán Montalvo

Highly concentrated in Coamo → Juana Díaz migration paths. Strong evidence of Indigenous and African ancestry.

Ruiz

A mountain surname connected to Taíno survival and free colored communities.

Why Didn’t We know?

Because Puerto Rico and its diaspora were conditioned by 500 years of colonial violence to forget. To forget that:

the Taíno resisted endured,
African communities carved out free towns long before abolition,
and multiracial families built Puerto Rico before Spain ever claimed it.

The church and the state imposed “whiteness” as an ideal. Many families quietly resisted, but many others hid or downplayed their origins to survive. Yet, the surnames preserved what the churches tried to hide.

Your DNA results.

Your grandmother’s “mulata” or “trigueña” notation.

Your great-great-grandfather appearing as “pardo libre” in an 1820s book.

These things are not trivial details. They are keys to the truth.

What This Means for You (and for Us)

If your family comes from:

Ponce
Juana Díaz
Coamo
Santa Isabel
Villalba
San Sebastián / Lares / Las Marías / Adjuntas

You almost certainly descend from Taíno, African, and Spanish ancestors, often all three.

Your Spanish surnames do not overrule that fact. These are simply stories of your family history layered over another story on top. Stories within the names, in the DNA, and in the parish records that survived the fires and hurricanes to accidentally preserve what colonial society wanted forgotten. Stories within all of us, those of us who are still piecing it back together.

We are the descendants of people who refused to disappear.

Sources & Recommended Reading

Primary / Historical Sources

Libro de Bautismos, Matrimonios y Defunciones, Parroquia San Ramón Nonato de Juana Díaz (1790–1885)
Registro Civil de Puerto Rico (1885–1930)
Censos de Puerto Rico, Archivo General de Puerto Rico (1779, 1800, 1860)
Catálogo de Esclavos y Libertos, AGPR
Ponce Civil Registration, FamilySearch.org (various years)

Scholarly Works

Antonio Nieves Montalvo, Documentos para la Historia de Ponce
Ángel López Cantos, Historia de la Esclavitud Negra en Puerto Rico
Isabelo Zenón Cruz, Narciso descubre su trasero (Afro–Puerto Rican identity)
Jalil Sued Badillo, La Herencia Taína
Lynne Guitar, “Indigenous Persistence in the Caribbean”
David Stark, Slave Families and the Bateyes of Puerto Rico

Genetics & Anthropology

Martínez-Cruzado, Juan C. “The History of the Caribbean Seen Through the MtDNA Lens.”
Simón Carlo, Genetic Studies on Puerto Rican Population Structure
Reich et al., studies on Native Caribbean genetic continuity

Genealogy Resources