Another example: Puerto Rico has several places with the name Ceiba. Be sure to check the list below to find place names that are the same but in different areas. This can become frustrating when looking for specific people and coming up empty. Because rural areas didn't (and some still don't) have street names and formal address numbers, knowing the barrio will help in finding ancestors each decade. Conversely, it is good to know the barrio as each municipality is quite large so knowing Cidra only isn't as helpful as knowing the barrio. If I only had the name Rincón passed down, I may have misidentified this as the municipality Rincón and spend time looking on the wrong side of the island. For example, my great-grandparents lived in Barrio Rincón in Cidra. Therefore, they may have referred to their barrio as their place of residence, passing that name down over the generations without using the name of the larger municipality the barrio belonged to. Also keep in mind that in the early 20th century, particularly in rural areas (el campo), people didn't leave very often. In the table below, I will put an asterisk next to those municipalities that either changed its name or was a part of another.
For example, if you are looking for a census record for Cataño before 1930, you must search in Bayamón as Cataño didn't become its own municipality until 1927. For each area of the island I listed places that had a name change after 1825, which may affect your research. Over the centuries, some places changed names, became absorbed into other municipalities or separated from larger ones. *Be sure not to have your browser on translate mode on this page or the place names won't be accurate.* When searching on, the municipality is listed as 'county' and the barrio as 'township'. It is safe to say, that very likely, if you do not have ancestors that you can find coming directly from Europe, the matrilineal line of your ancestors were indigenous.
Sadly, there is scant information to be found about specific places from this point in history. Obviously, all of these areas were likely inhabited by the native Taínos long before any Europeans and Africans arrived. This is usually near the date that the Catholic church would have been built. I included the "foundation" date of each of the pueblos only to help give context of when Europeans officially created a town meaning, there were enough settlers. When reading census records (1910-1940), there are no street names in rural areas but at the top left hand corner the form will indicate the municipalidad and the barrio. Of course, there are larger cities such as San Juan, Ponce, Mayagüez, and Caguas where it can sometimes become a little trickier because they are cities with another subset of divisions and urbanizations. The pueblo is where you will find the plaza and the Catholic church this is the center of town and that barrio will be known as the '. The ' barrios' in Puerto Rico are then divided further into a ' sector' otherwise known as a neighborhood in the states but because of the vastness of the space in the countryside it seems more like a village. These barrios are official, legal, geographical boundaries unlike in the states where a barrio may refer to a neighborhood such as Fairhill in Philadelphia or East Harlem in Manhattan. Those 78 municipalities are broken down into ' barrios'.
Puerto Rico is divided into 78 ' municipios' (municipalities) which many states would refer to as counties.