Joel’s dad’s side of my family originates here, in Ávila, Spain. His mom’s side is from Poland, but that’s not important right now.

Back in the day of last names, you got your last name based on one of these things:

Your job, your local travels, or your way way far away so very distant travels

So locals kept their last names as their occupations. Hence the last names of “Baker,” “Shoemaker," and “Poopscooper.”

For example my name is Mason Web-Narrator, but you never asked, did you.

Those with regional travels had their last names as the city they were from. This is where names like “Jessica Ávila,” “Ryan Cowley,” and “Henry Just-outside-of-Philly” come from. These are called Toponymic Surnames.

Well, some of Joel’s ancestors got the lovely idea to travel way far away from Spain to a little island called Puerto Rico, you might hear him mention it once or twice.

Pictured above is Pedro Arias Dávila, first colonial governor of Nicaragua, not Puerto Rico. It was honestly close enough, and if you disagree, I dare you to tell me where Nicaragua is on a map. Pictured to the right is El Morro in Puerto Rico, not Nicaragua.

A little bit of colonizing happens, the Spanish have (what I can only assume are) loving and amicable relationships with the Taino, the natives to PR and the Caribbean, and several hundred years later Joel was born!!!!

Official paperwork like “driver’s licenses” and “birth certificates” generally frowned upon accents in their paperwork during most of the US’s history and occupation of the island, so the accent was lost officially, but Joel and his family still use it as a way of keeping connected to their ancestry in Spain, and in Puerto Rico. And now you know what a Toponymic Surname is! Cool!