I know this is an obscure inquiry that’s of interest of only a few people including myself but I’m curious about where the last name “Parmequa” originated. I’ve been researching my family tree at ancestry.com and came across this name during my search. It was the last name of an apparent ancestor–a woman born in England around 1600 who later immigrated to New England. However, “Parmequa” doesn’t seem like an English name. It seems more like it’s Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, or French.
I did a Google search on the name “Parmequa” but came up with nothing. So, I’m asking if anyone at this site who has knowledge of Romance-language surnames can provide me with more information.
There were no standardized spellings for surnames in the 1600s. Peoples’ names would be spelled differently in all kinds of documents, totally at the discretion of whoever was writing them down. The name Pexall was also spelled Pexel, Pexil, Pecsall, Pexal and even Pepoll (I have no idea why the last spelling, but it was definitely used.) That’s just one example.
The name “Parmequa,” wherever it was originally written down, probably has several other spellings. I know this doesn’t help you much and I certainly understand your frustration at this. Your best bet is to brainstorm other possible phonetic spellings of that name and try them.
I know a family which shares the lastname Blosed/Blosel/Dloser. That’s different spellings for a woman and her two children who survived to adulthood - I suspect the one who died in childhood may have had a fourth version. While everybody in this specific family could read and write, at the time literacy still wasn’t taken for granted, and the guys at the civil registry didn’t bother ask “how do you spell it?”; the son did some genealogical research and thinks the original may have been Drossel.
The only word I know which sounds or looks a bit like “Parmequa” is “Parmiggia”, the area around the town of Parma, which appears to be an actual Italian lastname as well.
Thanks everybody for your help. I know this is a fairly difficult inquiry. I’m just trying to figure out how and why someone with a surname from a Catholic country would be in Elizabethan England at a time when it was defiantly Protestant. (Perhaps they were Protestant refugees who fled from Spain.)
In any case, has anybody come across anyone who has Parmequa has a surname today? I suppose I could check the White Pages and see if anybody still does.
Isn’t “Taliaferro” also an English name of some repute (and pronounced “Tolliver” if I remember right)? Though I couldn’t say if it actually comes from Italy, or if it merely looks like it.
I think “Beaumont” and “Beaufort” are also English noble names. I don’t know if it’s the case here, but French-sounding names in England might actually come from Huguenot families.
Although it sounds Italian to me, a search at http://www.gens.labo.net/it/cognomi/genera.html, which maps Italian surnames for contemporary Italy, doesn’t return any results. I tried a few variant spellings, too, so either it’s not Italian or else it’s a name that died out in Italy.
Or diplomatic personnel, or merchants, or a sailor who got lassoed by an inland girl… my own foreign lastnames hail from a wounded Napoleonic soldier and from an Italian couple fleeing Garibaldi’s troops; none of the three had intended to move to Spain (the Italians were on their way to Argentina).
One source which may be useful to try out guesses is paginebianche.it or paginegialle.it (the white and yellow pages, respectively).
It is…the Taliaferros were actually a major family in Colonial Virginia, and there are still a bunch of them around today. The name does come from Italy…Tagliaferro is mostly a northern Italian name, and the family’s descended from a Royal musician in Queen Elizabeth’s court.
I tried out the Italian white pages as well as the equivalent for Spain, France, Canada, the US, England, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil and couldn’t find anyone with “Parmequa” as a last name. It seems that no one with a listed phone number has it as a surname.