This appendix of Cebuano (Bisaya) surnames is meant to complement the contents of Category:Cebuano surnames. This will focus generally on surnames in Cebuano-speaking regions or of Cebuano speakers.
For the purposes of this page, the regions used to determine which surnames will be included here are Central Visayas, Leyte and Biliran, Zamboanga Peninsula (except Zamboanga City), Northern Mindanao, Sarangani, Davao Region, and Caraga (excluding the Surigao provinces) as well as few parts of Hiligaynon-speaking provinces of North Cotabato, South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat.
For information about surnames in the Philippines, see Appendix:Filipino surnames.
Note: While surnames are not generally written with diacritics (excluding the tilde in Ñ), surnames from Spanish or in Spanish orthography are marked with accents according to Spanish spelling rules for etymological and pronunciation purposes. Others may be marked with diacritics following Cebuano rules.
Many surnames by Cebuanos (including Visayans in Mindanao) come from the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos by Governor-General Narciso Clavería in 1849, whose majority of it are Spanish surnames, but also includes may surnames from Basque, Catalan, Galician, Chinese, Philippine languages (Tagalog, Kapampangan, Cebuano) and some foreign languages. The degree of implementation of the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos varied by province; especially in rural Cebu and the island provinces, there are many instances the surnames in a particular municipality begin with the same letter. Cebuano-language surnames which are in the Catálogo can be found at Category:Cebuano surnames in the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos.
In addition to names from Spanish and other Iberian languages, there are also many indigenous Cebuano surnames. Most of these surnames are concentrated in Cebu and Siquijor. Some of these predate the Catálogo.
Cebuano-speaking Filipino Chinese (usually from Fujian) usually have multiple-syllable surnames for those that came during the colonial era, usually those ending with -son/-zon (from Hokkien 孫／孙 (sun)); others kept them (and romanized them according to Spanish orthography) or adapted surnames borne by most Filipinos. Chinese migrants that arrived in the Philippines since the end of the colonial era usually have single-syllable surnames.
While most Cebuanos and Visayans (included assimilated migrants of other ethnic groups) have surnames from Spanish and other languages, there are also many surnames with indigenous roots. These are spread across the whole Cebuano-speaking area, but is most concentrated especially in Cebu and Siquijor.
Most Cebuano indigenous surnames are spelled in Spanish orthography, but there are also a significant number of which that has been "nativized".
Here is a list of some common indigenous Cebuano surnames. The region where they originated is marked on the right:
Most other surnames by Cebuanos or Visayans are from other languages, especially Spanish:
Most Spanish-derived surnames are spelled as they are, except that acute accents are stripped off (Ñ is retained). There are many spelling variants, usually due to seseo in Philippine Spanish and the influence of Cebuano phonology.
Some Spanish-derived surnames (as well as certain native surnames) reflect archaic use of certain letters especially due to the letter usage and sorting order at the time of writing of the Catálogo; examples are the use of Y for initial I (e.g. Ybáñez; compare Ibáñez) and X for the Spanish /x/ (e.g. Roxas; compare Rojas). Some of these were either modernized, and some retained.
Most of these are romanized according to their Hokkien pronunciation. For each name, the equivalent Chinese character are provided as well as their Mandarin form (based on Pinyin or Wade-Giles)
Monosyllabic
Multisyllabic
Surnames from Tagalog are also common in Mindanao where they are borne by people of Tagalog origin whose ancestors migrated from Aurora, Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Zambales, Calabarzon, Marinduque and Mindoro to Mindanao from the late Spanish and American colonial periods and since postwar era seeking new and better life and various economic opportunities. Although of Tagalog origin, many Tagalogs, like any other ethnolinguistic groups from Luzon and Panay, had assimilated to the Cebuano-speaking majority in Mindanao, linguistically identifying themselves as Visayans.
Below is a list of the 50 most common surnames in each of the Cebuano-speaking provinces. Highly urbanized cities are also treated as province-level divisions. By region from north to south (Central Visayas, Eastern Visayas, Zamboanga Peninsula, Northern Mindanao, Davao Region, Sarangani and Caraga), from most to least populous province.
Rankings listed are from regional individual surname data by Forebears, a genealogical and personal name database.
Distribution of surnames also vary widely across provinces and regions. Indigenous surnames predominate in Siquijor and Mactan; elsewhere, most are of Spanish origin. Lanao del Norte mostly have Maranao surnames, and Davao Occidental mostly have Lumad and Sangir surnames. Surnames from other Philippine languages, such as Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Kapampangan and Tagalog are not uncommon in Mindanao.
The most common surname in the Philippines, dela Cruz, mostly hardly appear to be common in Cebuano-speaking areas due to it getting replaced under the Catálogo in most provinces, especially Bohol, Siquijor and Camiguin; it is otherwise among the most common, usually trailing behind common Spanish surnames such as Flores, Cañete, Fernández, Ybáñez, Sánchez, Gonzales, Pérez, Caballero, García and Fuentes, as well as some indigenous surnames.
Maranao surnames (either from Maranao or Arabic) are explicitly marked (and linked to their Maranao entries)