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DNA and the Origins of the
Seminario Surname
 Where did the surname Seminario
originate? A clue comes from the website
FamilySearch.org, which reports that 2183
Seminarios born in Peru, 159 in Ecuador, and 99
in Spain are recorded in the family trees of
that site. A review of the FamilySearch
trees also shows some Seminarios born in Sicily
in the1800's and 1900's. We know that almost all of the Seminarios in
Peru are descended from Martín Seminario
Gandino, who emigrated from Spain, arriving in
Lima around 1673. We also know that many
of the Seminarios in Ecuador are descended from
José Seminario Correa, born in Piura, Peru
around 1740, the great-grandson of Martín, who
went to live in Cuenca and married Rosa
Petronila De La Piedra. Martín Seminario Gandino was the grandson of
Julio Cesáreo Seminario Gonzaga (JCS), the first
known Seminario in the ancestral line of the
Peruvian and Ecuadorian Seminarios. The
few facts of his life are known from his will of
February 17, 1647, made in Pamplona, Spain
shortly before he died. In the will, he
states his name as Julio Cesáreo Seminario y
Gonzaga, says he was born in Mantua, Italy and
that in 1597 he ceded the rights to his
inheritance in Mantua to Felipe Gonzaga.
We know from his will and other sources that he
came to Spain, owned a house in Eugui, Navarra,
worked in the Royal Armory there and also when
the Armory moved to Tolosa, Gipuzkoa, Spain in
1630, and was a resident of Tolosa up until his
hospitalization and death in Pamplona on July
12, 1647. In his will, he asked to be
buried underneath the main altar of the Church
of Santa María in Tolosa. In those days,
people paid for the right to be buried in the
church, and the position under the altar was a
high-cost location, so JCS must have been a man
of some wealth. One popular theory of the surname's origin is
that when the family members came from Italy to
Spain, their surname was changed from something
else to Seminario, perhaps because they lived
near a seminary. I find it hard to believe
that JCS would be so casual about his surname as
to make such a change. In those times,
people were proud of their descent from nobility
and would keep a noble surname in the family,
sometimes for generations after the
connection. JCS's second surname, Gonzaga, was the surname
of the dukes of Mantua, a very prominent noble
family that had several princes and cardinals,
even a Pope. Using Gonzaga as his second
surname did not mean that his mother was a
Gonzaga. The father's name-mother's name
rule was not followed strictly in the 16th and
17th centuries. But his use of the Gonzaga
surname did indicate descent from the Gonzaga
family, an indication supported by the fact he
left his inherited property to a Gonzaga, and by
his will's instructions for his descendants to
remember always the name of his family's patron,
Vespasiano Gonzaga, an Italian noble of great
accomplishments from Mantua province who became
a viceroy of Navarra and Valencia in Spain. The other evidence that the surname wasn't
changed to Seminario when the family moved to
Spain, at least not by JCS, is in the book Nobleza
de Andaluzia by Gonzalo Argote de
Molina published in 1588, before JCS moved to
Spain, which mentions the "House of Seminario
from the most illustrious House of
Colona". The full excerpt from the book is
quoted here.
Argote lists the Seminarios with other Italian
noble families from the island of Corsica that
came to Spain, but transcribes the names of the
other Italian families as they are, without
hispanicizing them. So it's possible that
the Seminarios were known as Seminarios even in
Corsica. I have tried without success to find evidence
of other Seminarios who lived in Spain prior to
JCS. Isabel Ramos Seminario, the
distinguished genealogist of the Seminario
family, mentions in an article that two other
genealogical researchers found mention of a
Federico Seminario who arrived in Andalucia in
1508, but her reference is not cited and I have
been unable to find any contemporaneous evidence
of Federico's existence. I made a tremendous
effort to find the complete will of JCS and any
contemporary evidence of the names of his wife,
parents and ancestors that connected to the
Gonzaga family, also without success despite a
trip to Spain. One obstacle is that Andalucia has few
digitized records before the 18the
century. Gipuzkoa has excellent online
records back to the 16th century, enabling me to
find the baptismal records of all of JCS's
grandsons, some of the marriage and death
records of his sons, and the marriage record of
another Seminario, Juan Bautista, who came to
Spain around the same time as JCS and also
worked in the Royal Armory of Tolosa. He
may have been a relative. In attempting to solve the puzzle of the origin
of the Seminario surname, a quick review of
Corsica's turbulent history is helpful. Corsica
came under the rule of the Italian city-state of
Genoa in 1284. Genoa, supported by Mantua,
sent Italian nobles to govern the island.
The period of Genoese rule lasted until 1553,
when an attack from France disrupted Genoese
rule and encouraged the Corsicans to fight for
their independence. The Genoese hung on
until 1729 when the last of the Italian nobility
was chased from the island. So, it appears
that the Seminarios were an Italian noble family
called upon to participate in the rule of
Corsica, and they remained there until Genoese
rule was disrupted, at which point some of them
moved to Spain, or back to Italy and then on to
Spain. One fascinating addition to this issue is a
newspaper article "Surnames of Roman Origin" by
Luis León Herrera in El Comercio,
the daily newspaper of Lima, on April 25, 1999,
quoted by Edwin Seminario Coloma in his
masterful work, Piura and the Seminarios,
History and Genealogy, volume II,
page 24. León Herrera states that many
Spanish surnames are of Roman origin and have
have been kept alive in the Castilian
language. As examples, he cites Cornejo
derived from Cornelius, Sanchez from Sanctis,
Ortega from Urticam, and Seminario from
Seminis. Seminis in Latin means "seed",
the same root as "seminal". León Herrera
doesn't cite his references, and I've been
unable to confirm this linguistic metamorphosis
from other sources, but have found evidence the
surnames Seminis and Seminaris exist in
Europe. So the Seminario family may have
been around since the time of Rome. What does DNA have to do with all this?
We owe the discovery of a fascinating clue to
Leslie Seminario of Florida, USA. Leslie,
descended from the Seminarios of Piura,
requested a DNA test from 23andMe.com, which
provides haplogroup information along with their
ancestry analysis. 23andMe.com reported
that Leslie's paternal haplogroup, R-M 405, was
shared by the ancestors of King Louis XVI of
France. I have confirmed from other
sources that R-M 405 is the haplogroup of the
House of Capet. This doesn't prove that
the Seminarios are descended from the House of
Capet, only that they share common ancestors,
but it does at least raise the possibility of
descent from the Capets. The House of
Capet, via their descendants in the Houses of
Valois, Plantagenet, Anjou, Bourbon and Orleans,
were the ancestors of royal and noble families
throughout Europe, including the nobility of
Corsica. The haplogroup is a kind of genetic marker that
travels down through the generations along the
paternal or maternal line. R-M 405 is of
the paternal type, which means that only those
who are descended from Seminarios entirely along
the paternal line would have it. It would
very interesting to find out if others whose
last name is Seminario have the same
haplogroup. If you have your DNA done and
find out your haplogroup is R-M 405, please send
me an email. We'll publish a tally of how
many Seminarios carry the same haplogroup.
And if you participate in our survey, we'll
acknowledge your participation on our
Contributors page unless you would prefer to
remain anonymous.
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