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Chacón, Jewish Hispanic surname of personal type, registered in the medieval Jewish quarters of Rioja, Basque Country and Castile and in the military orders of the Temple and Santiago or Saint James, from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

In the medieval Jewish quarters they appear with surnames of various forms as Gaon, Jacon, Gacon, Chacon in different locations, highlighting the family of Gaones of the Jewries of Vitoria (Alava, Basque Country) and Leyva (Rioja) in the fifteenth century composed by Samuel, Benjamin, Eleazar, Solomon and David Chacon, Gaon, Gacon or Jacon, sons of Jacob Gaon (1420-1492), merchants, landowners and religious and civic leaders; among them Samuel Chacon, also known as Don Gaon or Don Chacon was killed in 1463 in Tolosa (Navarra) while trying to collect the "Order" (increasing royal taxes) in a revolt of the hidalgos.

Other also were rabbis, heads of Jewish quarters or merchants and artisans as for example Abraham ibn Shem Tob Gaon, Soria (Castile, 1290); Joshua bar Abraham ibn Gaon, philosopher author of the Pentateuch from Tudela (Navarre, 1300); Pierre Chacon, assistant weaver in the Jewry of Paris (France, 1313); Acach Jagon or Jaçon, from the Jewry of Sangüesa (Navarre, 1363); Samuel Gaon, Soria (Castile, 1375); Simuel Gaon, son of Don Jaco Gaon, in the Jewry of Avila (Castile, 1448); Ospina Chacon, neighbor of Salvatierra (Alava, Basque Country, 1439, 1459) salt merchant, charged with collecting of tithes and customs charges of this villa (Espina or Ospina comes from the Basque word "Ozpina" meaning vinegar"); Eliazar Chacon, owner and lender, also from Salvatierra (Alava, Basque Country, 1451); Samuel Chacon, or Gaon, owner, lender and servicer, also from Salvatierra (Alava, Basque Country, 1455-1463); Jacó Bechacho, Jewry of Zaragoza (Aragon, 1481); Don Ysaque ben Chachon or Benchacho, Jewry of Avila (Castile, 1483); Samuel Gacon, Faro (Portugal, 1487), from the Jewry of Guadalajara, typographer of the Pentateuch, the first book printed in Portugal; Joha Gacon, Jewish minstrel (1492-1496) escorting King Ferdinand I the Catholic and Chacon, a Jewish from Tafalla (Navarre, 1500) of unknown activity.

In the Order of the Temple Frey Fernan Chacon was enlisted in the second half of the thirteenth century, as transcribed in a single reference written in the seventeenth century, so there is a possibility that actually he could have another similar surname, perhaps Checon or Etxekon from Navarre, which could be erroneously transcribed as Chacon. In the Order of Saint James it is well documented the administrator and commendatory Frey Ruy Chacon (~1315-1350) who was administrator and Commendatory of supplies in the period 1344-1348, and also Commendatory of the castles of Caravaca and Moratalla (Murcia) around 1345-1355 and Great Commendatory of Castile at the end of his life in 1354-1355; and the Commendatories and Freires Ferrant Chacon (Commendatory of the Castle of Miguel Esteban, Toledo) and Gonzalo Chacon (Commendatory of the Castle of Alange, Badajoz, 1350), all in the first half of XIV century

The integration process of the three friars of St. James is contextualized with leasing from 1270 onwards for collecting and supplies or provisions of the Order of Santiago Jewish administrators Campo de Montiel (Ciudad Real) Don Samuel, Don Bono and Don Jacob, activity that went on in later decades. It is in Castile and its territories, therefore, where since the early decades of the fourteenth century were found the freires and Commendatories surnamed Chacon, being Ruy Chacon the most prominent of them before his assassination in 1355 by henchmen of the Master of the Order the Infant Don Fadrique, stepbrother of the King Peter I of Castile, who was trying to fully control the Order to ensure his confrontations with the King to whom was loyal Ruy Chacon.

In 1429 Juan Arnalte Fernandez, known as Juan Chacon, by the second surname of his mother Teresa Fernandez Chacon, and his son Gonzalo Arnalte, called for the same reason Gonzalo Chacon, were in Ocaña (Toledo) serving to Alvaro de Luna, favorite of King Juan II of Castile and then Constable of Castile and Great Commendatory of Castile in the Order of Santiago, feudal lord, allied to other Castilian lords and friend of Jews as Abraham Benveniste, whose power amid the intrigues of the time, led him to fall into disgrace and be executed by royal order in 1453, moment when Gonzalo Chacon, who was in prison for his close relationship with the late lord, collaborated with King Juan II of Castile in finding the hidden fortune of Alvaro de Luna, after which he was rehabilitated and appointed to the education and care of the Queen Mother Elizabeth of Avis, instigator of the execution of his lord, and the princes infants brothers Enrique and Isabel, who established with him a close link to the point of being called by her "his father"; that young princess Isabel was later the Queen Isabel the Catholic and Gonzalo Chacon her great administrator and royal accountant.

His son Juan Chacon Alvarnáez joined the Queen's Chamber since1480, and was provided by his lady the Queen with the marriage with Luisa Fajardo that allowed him to access the Marquisate of the Vélez (in the Murcia frontier of Castile with the Muslim Granada Kingdom) who held before his father in law, and also among the stewards of the royal Chamber was a brother of Gonzalo, Arnalte Chacon, whose son JhonChacon tried to bring to Portugal in 1492 the family fortune being arrested at the border of Leon and their property confiscated, from what book them the intervention of the same Queen Isabel the Catholic, in exchange for their immediate conversion to Christianity as described by her Majesty in the letter of support which has been preserved in the Spanish National Library with the title 'To the Corregidor of Salamanca to be returned to Arnalte Chacón, a neighbor of Ávila, Jewish convert, what took him the guards of the ports when the expulsion.'

The descendants of that family, through different marriages, reached nobility in various Counties and Marquisates, while the elder Gonzalo Chacon, received administration and justice charges and villages lordships, such as the ones of Casarrubios del Monte (Toledo) and Arroyomolinos (Madrid) and many other, as the charge of Major of Justice of the city of Seville (1475) that approached his interests to the nearby Llerena (Badajoz), judicial center of the Province of Leon of the Order of Santiago at the time and a villa in which some of his descendants, as Sebastian Chacon (1500) and Juan Chacon Escudero (1560), settled. From them descends the surname Chacon up to the author of this paper, through Mariana Chacon de Escobar, married to Pedro Vazquez, neighbor of Segura de León (Badajoz) in 1668 in whose offspring has been transmitted the surname Chacon for 12 generations until today.

It is to be noted that the elder Gonzalo Chacon, was never benefited by titles of nobility, on the contrary he was purged of the Kingdom Council in 1498 for collaborating with Judaizing persons, among other charges, few years before his death.

The meaning of the surname Chacon, points out as a characteristic nickname of certain Jews from IX to XIII centuries invested with the authority (châcôn) or wisdom (chacham) either for responsibilities in the Jewry or in the teaching of Talmud; initially they lived in the Jewries of Castile, Navarra, northern Portugal, the Basque Country and La Rioja, with some early presence in France, and highlighted as rabbis and Talmudic teachers, leading Jewries, traders, tax collectors and administration and accounting, serving nobles and monarchs, in courtiers and palatial environments or artisans in printing and music.

A historically unsupported option is that Chacon, would be an alias Castilianized Basque (from "txakon", "txagun" neighbor homeowner) itself of certain Jews of Alava and Navarre from the thirteenth century. However the surname Chacon, left no traces in the Basque-Navarre culture in which the Euskaltzaindia (Academy of the Basque Language) does not consider it in the list of 11,000 surnames of their own culture.

The original meaning of the Hebrew adjective "châcôn" (khaw-sone, jason), "strong, powerful" is not a current meaning of the Spanish word "chacón" which today supports seven different uses of late or post-medieval implantation, as demonstrated.

The first according to the Royal Spanish Academy (R.A.E.) aims to capture the voice of a Filipino lizard known among the population as 'tok-kó', onomatopoeia of that sound said in the language of the Tagalog people, while the hispanicized version of the Tagalog language gives place to the appearance of 'chacón' by pronouncing on the basis of the letter "ch" the original word 'tok-kó' already in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries long after the Philippine islands were discovered and colonized in the sixteenth century therefore very late the true origin of the surname, since the first appearance of the Philippine meaning of "chacon" in dictionaries of the Spanish language defined as "the sound produced by the animal" dates from 1899. Surprisingly even a dictionary of Sephardic surnames emulates such Spanish Chacon meaning although assigned to the 'salamander'.

Also the "llacon", old term designating a leg of lamb, was turned into 'chacon' in North of Spain, Asturias and some areas of Western Cantabria, by a whistling pronunciation of the consonant 'll' in 'ch' which gave rise to the use of the word 'chacon' instead of 'llacon'. Another meaning "cheerful, boisterous, jacarandous" spreads in the Golden Age through literary characters surnamed Chacon, with funny roles in the comedies of the time, somewhat like associating such implication to the meaning of the surname and the word in the Spanish culture

The surname was present between the Sephardic in the Diaspora, and between descendants of Jews as convert Christians integrated since the fifteenth century in the various sectors of civil society, including craftsmen, religious, inquisitors, soldiers, poets and courtiers, who reached in Castile the nobility at the dawn of seventeenth century. It is included in several lists of Sephardic surnames propagated, at least since 1885, when the first attempt of their recognition of Spanish nationality, and other recently published on the occasion of the decree of October 1, 2015 for recognition of nationality to descendants of the Sephardim expelled in 1492.

The web forebears.com/surnames recorded in 2014 an approximate amount of 362,073 people surnamed Chacon Worldwide, although it should be noted that following the Anglo-Saxon style the web refers only to citizens bearing Chacon as first surname. 93.7% of them were in American countries, while 5.5% were in European countries, including 4.67% in Spain (17.606) and the remaining 0.8% in countries in Africa and Asia.

Among the American countries, the surname showed the highest% in the world total in Venezuela (22,8%), Mexico (12,5%) and Colombia (10,7%), followed by Guatemala (8,3%), Costa Rica (7,9%), EEUU (5,9%), Peru (5,8%), Brazil (2,9%), El Salvador (2,8%), Ecuador (2,5%), Chile (2,4%), Cuba (2,3%), Honduras (2,1%), Argentina (1,7%), Bolivia (0,7%), Panamá (0,6%) y Nicaragua (0,5%). Taking into account the abundance of the surname to the population of each country, it is more common in Costa Rica, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Panama and Peru.

Therefore we can say that today the surname acquires its greatest presence in the Americas, and within it in the countries mentioned above, either in order of absolute abundance (Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, etc.) or in order of abundance on the population of each country (Costa Rica, Venezuela, Guatemala, etc.).

In Europe it is established in the country of origin, Spain, with 4.7% (around 17606, which approximately represents a half of the total census, considering the people surnamed Chacon as second surname), while an additional 0.7% is dispersed by other countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland in relation to the migration of workers, very important in the past century.

It spread in those countries from the Spanish colonization; already in the 2nd voyage of Columbus (1493), which set sail from Seville, he took part the sailor Juan Chacon, but very substantially with the Sephardim of the persecuted Diaspora, expelled and dispossessed of their land and properties in Spain in 1492, and arrived in America, after long wanderings and stays in Portugal, France, Holland, Turkey, Morocco, Greece and other countries, especially from the ports of Holland and France; also with Spanish troops and settlers, descendants of Jewish and converted into Christianism, integrated into the various sectors of civil society, including artisans, poets, intellectuals, members of military orders, freires, officers and soldiers, courtiers, religious and inquisitors, some of whose branches Castile reached the nobility in the early seventeenth century and spread in various titles of marquisates and counties. Also incorporate the surname some families of converts Moriscos (Moorishs) in the last years of the ancient kingdoms of Granada and Murcia, in the second half of the fifteenth century until their expulsion in the early seventeenth century when they had to adopt Christianity or leave their homelands.

In Spain is currently concentrated the surname in the south and southeast of Spain, in Andalusia, Murcia and south of Extremadura, especially in the province of Cadiz and also in major cities of internal migration like Seville, Madrid and Barcelona, and nearby big villages, although, as it was indicated before, the Spanish citizens surnamed Chacon represent at present a minority of less than a 5% with respect to all the citizens thus surnamed in the World, among which predominate those living in the mentioned South American countries.

Reference:

Chacón Montero, José (2016). El apellido Chacón: origen y primeros asentamientos, 2ª edición, 865 páginas.

05th July, 2017, Granada (Spain)

Chacon is a Sefardic surname. It comes from the word for 'strength' in old Hebrew.

Chacon is derived from a Spanish word meaning 'gecko'.