I think we are all curious as to the origin of the phonetically similar surnames
CARRICO, CARACO, etc. Orthographically, we would expect them to be Portuguese,
Spanish, or Italian.
As you know, two of our DNA project members are CARACO, from Bursa Prov.,
Turkey, one of whom is a practicing Sephardic Jew. Their DNA match indicates
they have a 95% probability of having a common ancestor back about 18
generations, which is around the 1400s.
I've been doing some messaging on the Turkey board at
GenForum.com, and I've
been told that around the late 1490s, Sephardic Jews migrated from Spain to the
Ottoman Empire (now Turkey). A little searching at Wikipedia informs me that in
1492, Spain issued the "Alhambra Decree," which mandated that Jews leave Spain
or face the Inquisition.
Today, surname CARACO is only common in Spain, so it appears we now know how
this Spanish surname came to be in Turkey.
Of course it's hard to escape the comparison with Pero Dias CARRICO of Portugal,
who faced the Inquisition in 1629 for the crime of "Judaismo."
Diana