Who's in a name? Let's go look

A search in Spain to locate others named Meras

Author: By Phyllis Meras, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, January 11, 1998

Page: M11

Section: Travel

Now Meras is different from Smith or Jones -- not better or worse, of course, but considerably rarer. There are only two in the New York telephone directory, both related; none in Boston; three in Miami; and one in Chicago. Those are the only major cities I've checked, but it does seem there aren't very many Merases, and a surprisingly large proportion seem to be of the secretive sort.

As for my direct forebears, all I knew before Epcot was that my great-grandfather had come to America from France near the turn of the century. There was a legend about someone in the family being Mother Superior in the convent where St. Bernadette lived. And there was another tale that told of a Spanish knight named Meras, who, once upon a time, had killed three Moorish kings.

Although a trifle skeptical about what Epcot might add to the potpourri, I requested details.

What I found out, and got emblazoned on a varnished plaque, was that, the French great-grandfather notwithstanding, Meras was a Spanish name. It was one acquired by those who lived along the River Mera in the province of Galicia in the northwestern part of the country. I discovered, too, that in the Galician tongue, meras is a misty drizzle. (That explains a lot about the foggy way I tend to operate.)

Just at the time this Epcot information came to light, I was preparing for a trip to Spain. I decided to alter my itinerary a little and make my way to the banks of the River Mera to scout out any existing cousins or aunts.

I had been in Galicia once before, in Santiago de Compostela, its most important touristic site. There, the missionary St. James was buried after being beheaded for his beliefs in AD 44. In the Middle Ages, his burial place became a leading pilgrimage destination. (Among the devout were criminals condemned to prison who could elect, instead, to go on pilgrimage there.)

Then, later on, during a fearsome battle between Spaniards and Arabs, a mysterious knight appeared on a white charger and urged the Spanish on to victory. The knight was said to be St. James. A Romanesque cathedral was erected to honor him, with monasteries and convents and hostels and arcaded streets all around. Even today, this city of 80,000 welcomes more than a million pilgrims a year, and in a Holy Year (1999 is the next one), that number swells considerably.

I spent only a morning this time seeing Santiago de Compostela again, since it wasn't the reason I was in Galicia. My purpose, pure and simple, was the cousin hunt. That led me farther north toward Coruna, with a stop en route for R & R at the spa on the island of La Toja.

There, I lathered myself with exotic black La Toja soap made from local thermal salts and learned about the shellfish harvesting in the rias -- the estuaries -- along the coast. In these, because of the way the estuaries are protected fom Atlantic storms, mussels are raised -- the fattest and most succulent in all Spain.

One morning at the Gran Hotel La Toja, I asked the concierge if he knew anything about the Meras name. He beamed and suggested that I might be related to Franco's widow, the Duchess of Meiras. I said rather curtly I hoped not. Next, he offered that just across from Coruna was an old fishing village called Mera. He said I should give it a look.

I took a train to Coruna. It is a stately city of pretty squares and tranquil gardens, a waterfront promenade and ancient church after ancient church in its Old Town. It was from the harbor there on July 20, 1588, that Spain's Invincible armada of 130 men-of-war carrying 19,000 soldiers and 10,000 sailors set sail to defeat the fleet of England. Every detail of the expedition had been personally planned by Spain's Philip II -- every detail except the weather, which battered the Spanish ships and drove them off their course, demolishing 63 of them and drowning 10,000 men.

Coruna today is known for the glass-fronted verandas on its houses that face the sea. Their tiny panes reflect the blue and the white of the shimmering water. There is also an ancient Roman lighthouse there, the Hercules Tower, the only lighthouse from Roman days still standing in Europe.

After I had strolled Coruna's streets and squares, watched an art class painting pictures of its Church of Santiago and photographed the city's red-turreted town hall, I headed back to the railway station to find a taxi to take me to Mera. The first driver I found spoke no English, but he gallantly deferred to one who did and was more than willing to take me searching for Merases in Mera.

For 14 years, it turned out, my driver had worked for the Chicago Bridge and Iron Co. and traveled Europe and the Middle East for them. He philosophized about socialism and democracy and the Common Market. He told me as we edged the water heading for Mera 10 miles away that though once a fishing community, today it is a summer resort for the wealthy. Coruna and Vigo, he said, are now Spain's major fishing ports.

We drove out onto a headland and watched the waves of Coruna Bay splashing below a lighthouse. To get to the headland, we traveled a narrow, vine-bordered road edged with white summer houses. I had hoped there might be a hotel where I could leaf through the telephone book looking for Merases, but I could find none, and my driver, pleasant though he was, turned out not to be willing to just knock on any door and ask for a Mera or a Meras. Still, my driver told me that Meras once had been a common Galician name. But many Galicians, he said, had emigrated to the United States and Cuba and South America. Probably a lot of them were Merases, he appended, and beamed as he imparted this nugget.

That didn't seem unreasonable, especially since the plaque from Epcot had informed me that there was an Ecuadorian poet named Meras, and there were those three Merases in Miami. It might be that my family search was going to take me farther afield than I had expected.

I flew back the next day to Madrid, where I had a clue to a genuine Meras. She was in the cartography department at the Naval Museum. I had heard about her at Brown University, where she had done research for awhile. I tracked her down among charts and globes and models of galleons. Her name was Luisa-Martine Meras, and she had a cousin in Valencia, she said, who was working on a real family history. He had found three branches of the Meras family, and one member of it, she said proudly, had been a chronicler for Ponce de Leon on his trip to Florida when he found the Fountain of Youth.

She let me glance at a little of her cousin's research, and, though it was in Spanish, I could make out, with her assistance, something about that Florida Meras. He was Captain dom Pedro de Meras and Solis, had been a captain of the Spanish infantry in Flanders, and, in 1566, had been sent to Florida. There was another military Meras considerably later, a colonel who became some sort of governor in Cuba in 1857. And, of course, there was the proverbial black sheep. That one, as I recall, had been done in by a Spanish king for disloyalty.

According to Luisa-Martine, the Meras family was Valencian rather than Galician, the River Mera and all that foggy business notwithstanding. That was interesting to hear, but I wished I had known it sooner, for Valencia had already been on my Spanish trip. I had spent my time there eating its proverbial oranges and buying saffron and almonds in its enormous market hall. I had viewed the violet agate cup in the cathedral that is said to be the Holy Grail from which Christ drank at the Last Supper. I had learned, too, that Valencia is the fan-making capital of Spain. But I had never thought to consult the telephone book for Valencian Merases.

Luisa-Martine said her geneaologist cousin would surely be interested to know anything I knew that he didn't about Meras relatives -- even those of the French variety. So I have been leafing through old papers ever since I returned from Spain, hoping to come across something stellar about a Meras. It may well be, however, before my research is done, that my travels will take me back to Florida, to South and Central America, France, and even Mauritania -- the home of those three Moorish kings. (After all, what became of their wives?)

Further information on Spain is available from the Tourist Office of Spain, 666 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10103; telephone 1-212-265-8822.