Hello Rudy,
Per my father, names such as Guadalupe, Jesus, Refugio, Trinidad
etc., often had the first name Maria or Jose inserted before to specify
the sex of the person. For example, Jose Guadalupe vs. Maria Guadalupe;
Maria de Jesus vs. Jose de Jesus; Maria del Refugio vs. Jose Refugio,
etc., Maria is often abbreviated as Ma. & Jose is often abbreviated as
J. When searching ancestors, I often like to throw in a Jose or Maria
before their name if I only have one name. For example, I had an
ancestor that I only knew as Rafael Perez. It turns out his actual name
at the time of his baptism was actually Jose-Ystanislao-de-San-Rafael
Perez. You have to try all sorts of things in your research.
You asked a question earlier about baptisms. Often the mother
did not attend the baptism of her child due to bed rest for some 40
days. The grandparents are usually mentioned in baptismal records from
early 1800's on, at least in records that I have studied in Jalisco.
They probably would only have attended if they were godparents as well.
In my family, the tradition goes that maternal grandparents would have
also been godparents to the first born. The second born would have had
the paternal grandparents as godparents. Of course if a grandparent had
died already, a suitable replacement would have been sought. In my
brother's case (second born), his godparents were our paternal
grandfather, and my mother's grandmother since he was an unmarried
widower. I recall my mother telling me that she only attended her
children's baptisms that were conducted in the US.
Irma Gomez Gtz.
N. Calif.

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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:21:01 -0700
From: "Rudy Ruiz"
Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] Introduction / Research Questions
To: research@lists.nuestrosranchos.org
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Just wanted to list the URL for my research resources:

http://www.nuestrosranchos.org/node/17222

Does anyone have any insight into why many entries in baptism records
contain the 'Ma.' prefix? Is it an abbreviation of Maria?

and

I was browsing the transcription of film 668255 and found something I
found
troubling/interesting. I was searching for Jose Antonio Castellanos and
Dorotea Dias where they appear together as mother and father. I found
one
entry that appears to be a positive match. Below that match are five
others
with the same Dorotea Dias and variations of a Castellano as the father
(Jose Cirilo, Jose). They are all in the same location/church. Which is
more
likely a) they are the same person withs transcription errors or b) they
are
different individuals altogther? Here is the link to the data:

http://search.labs.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#fatherSurnam
e=castellanos;p=1;motherGivenName=dorotea;motherSurname=dias;searchType=
standard