Anthroponymy is the science that studies people's names and specifically historical anthroponymy focuses on identifying the names and surnames of people from past centuries as well as contributing to the understanding of their meaning, origin, distribution, evolution, modifications, etc.
Although very complete population censuses have been kept for the 19th and 20th centuries, even detailing the personal details of all the members of each of the families that lived in l'Horta of Valencia, as we go back in time these census lists become more incomplete and scarce. And not only because of the loss of the archives, which is another reason, but also because society did not have the same criteria and needs to make an inventory of the whole population on an individual basis.
As in other matters, we have practically no evidence left of what the names of the inhabitants of l’Horta were in Muslim times, between the 8th and 13th centuries. After the conquest and the distribution of James I in the latter century, more information began to be available about the first Christian repopulation in 1200, although the documents are neither serial nor complete, but mainly individual parchments that tell us about only part of the population.
From 1373 onwards, the situation changed considerably, not because of any particular historical event, but because it was the first year in which the fiscal records were kept regarding the collection of a tax for the monarchy called the morabatí, which was levied by royal officials for seven years.
Similarly, the documents issued every seven years since that time have not been preserved, but we do have certain documents from the following centuries, from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries until 1707, when it was abolished along with all the Valencian institutions within the framework of the new Bourbon monarchy and the abolition of the Furs de València (Valencia’s regional code of laws).
Furthermore, these lists of residents on the morabatí tax have only been preserved for some of the towns and villages in l’Horta of Valencia, as some of the towns were lordships and were not charged by the monarchy, so they do not appear in the public archives. However, from the 16th century onwards, new taxes appeared which, in some cases, generated various censuses of the Valencian population which were progressively more complete and, therefore, also of l’Horta of Valencia.
It should also be clarified that for cultural reasons, historically these fiscal lists and population censuses were made only by identifying the male head of the family, and often, when a woman was the fiscal and legal holder of a family unit, the way she was written down was like the wife of, the widow of or the daughter of, in a practical illustration of what are the dominant gender relations for centuries. It is for this reason that we know in greater or lesser detail the names of the men in l’Horta of past centuries, but very rarely the names of the women, none other than half pf the population!
In spite of the documentary losses we have already mentioned, the lists of names and surnames are extensive for eight centuries of history. Therefore, in this section we will offer some selected examples that may serve as an illustration of their contribution.
