Use of tilde in Spanish names

Question

I am researching the Pena family, written with a tilde Peña in many of the source records. I looked up profiles with this last name, and it seems to be random if the tilde is used or not.

What is the preferred WikiTree style?

Comments

Use the name as it appears in primary records.

WikiTree profiles you see that use Pena instead of Peña may have been created from software or websites that did not accommodate the ñ, or maybe the WikiTree software didn't properly accommodate the ñ at the time the profile was created, or maybe the person who created the profile didn't know how to make the ñ. And of course some families named Peña may have altered the spelling to Pena when they settled in a non-Hispanic country.

Answer 1

Please see Help:Name Fields (wikitree.com)

Answer 2

Pena and Peña are two different words with two different meanings (and phonetics) ...

The Spanish National Institute of statistics publishes data about surnames. It looks like both words are used as surnames (Peña is much more common):

https://www.ine.es/apellidos/formGeneral.do?vista=1&L=1

Surname: PEÑA
Province        1 Surname       2 Surname       Both surnames
Total   Per thousand (‰)        Total   Per thousand (‰)        Total   Per thousand (‰)
Total     70.187        1,479     70.990        1,496     1.090         0,023
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Surname: PENA
Province        1 Surname       2 Surname       Both surnames
Total   Per thousand (‰)        Total   Per thousand (‰)        Total   Per thousand (‰)
Total     10.639        0,224     10.817        0,228     141   0,003

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Sn

Answer 3

No, Pena and Peña are not the same last name, though I agree with Ellen that the tilde could have gone missing in emigration. 

There were a lot of problem with the ñ (typewriters no designed specifically for Spanish-talking countries did not have it) in international paperwork. In recent days, with the arise of the WWW, early systems and keyboards did not support it. Even today, website domains do not accept ñ as a valid character.

On the other hand, last name Pena could also come from the Italian last name Penna (with an n missing), which has the same Latin roots as Peña (rock).

If you have trouble adding special Spanish characters you can try these easy shortcuts to the basic ASCII code:

ñ= alt+164

Ñ= alt+165

á= alt+160

é= alt+130

í= alt+161

ó= alt+162

ú=alt+163

(It's not necessary to use tilde in capital letters, except the Ñ, but there're very few words that start with ñ)