Pinheiro, a origem portuguesa

The name Pinheiro is of Portuguese origin.

The English meaning of Pinheiro is Pine tree

There are many indicators that the name Pinheiro may be of Jewish origin, emanating from the Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.

When the Romans conquered the Jewish nation in 70 CE, much of the Jewish population was sent into exile throughout the Roman Empire. Many were sent to the Iberian Peninsula. The approximately 750,000 Jews living in Spain in the year 1492 were banished from the country by royal decree of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Jews of Portugal, were banished several years later. Reprieve from the banishment decrees was promised to those Jews who converted to Catholicism. Though some converted by choice, most of these New-Christian converts were called CONVERSOS or MARRANOS (a derogatory term for converts meaning pigs in Spanish), ANUSIM (meaning "coerced ones" in Hebrew) and CRYPTO-JEWS, as they secretly continued to practice the tenets of the Jewish faith.

Our research has found that the family name Pinheiro is cited with respect to Jews & Crypto-Jews in at least 11 bibliographical, documentary, or electronic references: 

-Sources 1 - 10 for Pinheiro. From the civil records of Amsterdam, The Netherlands | 

The Amsterdam Municipal Archives possess a complete set of registers of intended marriages from 1578 to 1811, the year when the present Civil Registry was started. Between 1598 and 1811, 15238 Jewish couples were entered in these books. Both the number of records and the volume of data that may be extracted from them are unprecedented.

From the records of Bevis Marks, The Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London

Bevis Marks is the Sephardic synagogue in London. It is over 300 years old and is the oldest still in use in Britain.The Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation of London has published several volumes of its records: they can be found in libraries such as the Cambridge University Library or the London Metropolitan Archive

From the burial register of Bethahaim Velho Cemetery, Published by the Jewish Historical Society of England and transcribed by R. D. Barnett. | 

The register gives us dates for the burials in the "Bethahaim Velho" or Old Cemetery. The dates are listed as per the Jewish calendar. 

Finding Our Fathers | A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy, by Dan Rottenberg

In this work Dan Rottenberg shows how to do a successful search for probing the memories of living relatives, by examining marriage licenses, gravestones, ship passenger lists, naturalization records, birth and death certificates, and other public documents, and by looking for clues in family traditions and customs. Supplementing the "how to" instructions is a guide to some 8,000 Jewish family names, giving the origins of the names, sources of information about each family, and the names of related families whose histories have been recorded. Other features included a country-by-country guide to tracing Jewish ancestors abroad, a list of Jewish family history books, and a guide to researching genealogy.

Precious Stones of the Jews in Curaçao; Curaçaon Jewry 1656-1957, by Isaac Samuel Emmanuel (1957) 

Names taken from 225 tombstones of 2536 persons, 1668 - 1859, men, women and some Rabbis. Includes cemetery history and plan, biographies including family histories, chronological list of names, alphabetical list of family names + number of members + eldest tombstone year, large bibliography, general alphabetical index, 15 genealogies.

A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel,by Cecil Roth.

This book contains names from the Sephardic community of greater Amsterdam. Amsterdam was a major haven and transfer point for Sephardim and Crypto-Jews leaving Iberia.

From the PhD Dissertation of Michelle M. Terrill, "The Historical Archaeology of the 17th and 18th-Century Jewish Community of Nevis, British West Indies", Boston University, 2000 | 

This is an historical archaeological examination of a 17th- and 18th-century Jewish community on the island of Nevis in the British West Indies. Unlike earlier archaeological studies of the Jewish Caribbean Diaspora that focused on single sites, the focus of this investigation was on increasing the understanding of the roles and lives of the Sephardim in the colonial Caribbean. The study of the Neevis community indicates that the Jews of the Caribbean were not fully integrated socially or politically into British colonial society.

Raizes Judaicas No Brasil,(Jewish Roots in Brazil) by Flavio Mendes de Carvalho. 

This book contains names of New Christians or Brazilians living in Brazil condemned by the Inquisition in the 17th and 18th centuries, as taken from the archives of Torre do Tombo in Lisbon. Many times details including date of birth, occupation, name of parents, age, and location of domicile are also included. The list also includes the names of the relatives of the victims. There are several cases in which many members of the same family were tortured and sentenced so some family lines may end here.

Noble Families Among The Sephardic Jews, by Isaac Da Costa, Bertram Brewster, and Cecil Roth. 

This book provides genealogy information about many of the more famous Sephardic families of Iberia, England and Amsterdam. It documents the assimilation, name changes and conversion of many Sephardic families in Spain, England and The Netherlands. There is a large section dealing with the genealogy of the members of Capadose and Silva families in Spain and Portugal. This reference includes genealogical tables and a translation of Da Costa’s 1850 work "Israel and the Gentiles", with chapters by Bertram Brewster on the Capadose conversion to Christianity and by Cecil Roth on their Jewish history.

A Origem Judaica dos Brasileiros (The Origin of The Brazilian Jews), by Jose Geraldo Rodrigues de Alckmin Filho | 

This publication contains a list of 517 Sephardic families punished by the inquisition in Portugal and Brazil. 

+Sources 11 - 11 for Pinheiro

Around the 12th century, surnames started to become common in Iberia. In Spain, where Arab-Jewish influence was significant, these new names retained their old original structure, so that many of the Jewish surnames were of Hebrew derivation. Others were directly related to geographical locations and were acquired due to the forced wanderings caused by exile and persecution. Other family names were a result of conversion, when the family accepted the name of their Christian sponsor. In many cases, the Portuguese Jews bear surnames of pure Iberian/Christian origin. Many names have been changed in the course of migration from country to country. In yet other cases "aliases", or totally new names, were adopted due to fear of persecution by the Inquisition.

Some common variations of Pinheiro are Pinhero and Pignero.

The following websites are relevant to the surname Pinheiro:

•http://www.saudades.org/Letter_Recife_Increasing_Returns.htm

•http://knowlescollection.blogspot.com/2011/02/sephardic-families-of-nevis.html