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Please note that this article relates to the customs of contemporary speakers of Iberian languages, not the ancient Iberian people.

In most Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan-speaking regions of the world, people have at least two surnames. One is inherited from the father, the other from the mother. Parents usually pass on to their children the name they inherited from their father.

In most Spanish-speaking countries, the father's surname is written before the mother's surname (although there are occasional exceptions to this rule). Thus, for instance, Vicente Fox Quesada is señor Fox ("Mr. Fox" in English), not señor Quesada, and "Fox" is not his middle name.

In Portuguese-speaking countries, the father's surname is in most cases placed after the mother's surname. In these countries, it is very frequent that children get two surnames from each of their parents, thus having usually the last surname of each of their grandparents.

The traditional naming conventions are now changing as attitudes toward gender equality evolve. In Portugal, since 1977, the child's last name can come either from the father or from the mother, but the latter is still very uncommon. The law in Spain has undergone a similar change; as in Portugal, it has had little effect on custom. Current Spanish law says that all the children in a family must have the same system of surnames: if the eldest has the mother's first surname before the father's, then the rest of the siblings must use the same order. Even before these laws, people could change the order in special cases, such as clauses of inheritances.

Spanish names

In Spanish-speaking countries, the name of the father is put before the name of the mother; these are then known as the apellido paterno ("paternal surname") and the apellido materno or segundo apellido (maternal or second surname) respectively.

The particle "de"

In Latin American countries when a woman marries, she may choose to drop her own maternal surname and adopts her husband's paternal surname, with "de" ("of") inserted between. Thus if Ángela López Sáenz marries Tomás Portillo Blanco, she may style herself Ángela López de Portillo. This convention, however, is more a social styling than an official renaming such as takes place in English-speaking countries: on official documents, she will still be identified by her two maiden surnames. In many areas, however, this tradition is now seen as an antiquated form of discrimination against women (the de can be read as implying ownership) and is consequently on the decline. A more formal version is Ángela López, Sra. de Portillo ("Sra." is an abbreviation for señora: "Mrs.", "wife"). In Spain, a woman does not ever change her official surnames when she marries. An example of the uncertainty of this usage is in Don Quixote 2, V where Teresa Panza reminds that she should be properly called by her father's surname.

Transmission of surnames

If, as is very common in Spanish-speaking families, Ángela López and Tomás Portillo choose to perpetuate their forenames into the next generation, their children would be Tomás Portillo López and Ángela Portillo López.

The order rule means that the surnames of the female branch get lost as generations pass. If the female surname is especially prestigious or the combination is improper, the order may be altered. While Spain has recently introduced legal provisions to allow parents to freely decide the order of surnames, the overwhelming majority of Spaniards continue to follow the traditional pattern of father's first and mother's second. A case of improper combination would be the folk case of Mr. Laca marrying Miss Gamos. Laca Gamos sounds like la cagamos, "we shit on it" or "we fucked up", an offensive phrase. They would name their children as Gamos Laca.

As is still the case with Catalan names, in Spanish names the option exists to connect the two surnames by means of y ("and"): one well known example of this is José Ortega y Gasset. Thus, Tomás could choose to style himself Tomás Portillo y Blanco, albeit at the risk, in most of the contemporary world, of appearing affected or self-consciously following a slightly antiquated use. This use of y though remains common practice in the Philippines, where it is used, among others, in keeping criminal records.

The prevalence of this custom of using two surnames varies. For example, Argentina is a Spanish-speaking country, but most Argentinians' identity is recorded at birth with only their paternal surname. Thus, one would only occasionally hear Jorge Luis Borges referred to as "Borges Acevedo", although a native Spanish speaker would certainly understand that usage. On the other hand, in some countries, such as Honduras, two surnames are required to be recorded on the birth certificate. This can cause difficulties in cases where the father's identity is unknown, or for immigrants who only have one surname.

Often, one specifies for brevity only one of the two surnames, usually the one inherited from one's father. Thus, if one were to shorten the name of Gabriel García Márquez, it should be "García", not "Márquez" (although in his case it is more likely to be his nickname "Gabo"). Occasionally, a person with a common paternal surname and an uncommon maternal surname becomes widely known by the maternal surname, as with the artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso, best known simply as "Picasso", or the poet Federico García Lorca, often known simply as "Lorca", or even the Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, best known as "Zapatero". Conversely, Eduardo Hughes Galeano is known as "Galeano" because his paternal surname is completely foreign to Spanish. In his childhood he occasionally signed as "Eduardo Gius" as an approximate pronunciation of "Hughes".

Not every surname is a single word. A particularly felicitious or renowned combination of paternal and maternal surnames may propagate to the following generation as a double-barrelled paternal surname, especially when the paternal surname alone would be considered "undistinguished". This was the case with former Mexican President José López Portillo, whose mother was a "Pacheco" and whose full style was "José López Portillo y Pacheco". Other double-barreled surnames derive from church names, as "San José". When a person has one of these double-barreled surnames, it is more common to use the 'y' between the paternal and maternal component parts.

Castile and Alava regions

It was also common for surnames originating from Castile and Álava to have the form "(patronymic) de placename". Hence for José Ignacio López de Arriortúa, "López de Arriortúa" is just one surname. This can cause confusion as both "López" and "de Arriortúa" can be found as single surnames. In Spain, unlike in neighboring France, the prefix "de" (meaning "of") on a surname does not typically indicate noble origin. It may be introduced just to mark a surname that can be misunderstood as a forename. Thus, Luis de Miguel Pérez marks that his forename is just Luis, not Luis Miguel. In short forms, the de may be included (Hernando de Soto is known as "de Soto") or not (Felipe de Borbón is a "Borbón", not a "de Borbón").

The particle "y"

Beginning in the 16th century, the Spanish custom of separating the two surnames with the copulative conjunction "y" (meaning "and") arose. Examples of this custom include names such as Luis de Góngora y Argote (16th and 17th century Andalusian writer), Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (18th and 19th century Aragonese painter) and José Ortega y Gasset (Madrilenian philosopher and essayist of the 20th century). This use gained legal sanction with the Ley de Registro Civil in 1870, which required birth certificates to indicate the two surnames joined with the particle "y". In this fashion, the birth certificates of Spanish politicians Felipe González Márquez and José María Aznar López appeared as “Felipe González y Márquez" and "José María Aznar y López".

'son of' and 'ez'

Although the use of double surnames renders the matter far less common than in the English-speaking world, a man who has the identical name to his father may suffix his name with "(h)" (standing for "hijo", meaning "son"), analogously to the English language "Jr.".

In Spanish, most surnames ending in "-ez" originated as patronymics. Thus "López" originally meant "son of Lope", "Fernández" meant "son of Fernando", etc. Other common examples of this are "Hernández" (from Hernando, a variant of "Ferdinand" / "Fernando"), "Rodríguez" (from "Rodrigo"), "Sánchez" (from "Sancho"), "Martínez" (from "Martín"), and "Álvarez" (from "Álvaro"). Not all last names in -ez have this origin, however. Because the Spanish letter "z" is pronounced identically to the letter "s" in all of Spanish America (or about 9/10 of the Spanish-speaking world), one finds in Spanish America spellings such as "Cortez" (e.g. Alberto Cortez) and Valdez, which are not patronymics and which traditionally were (and in Spain still are) always spelled "Cortés" (e.g. "Hernán Cortés") and Valdés. The new spellings were no doubt created by analogy with the large number of last names in -ez.

After the recognition of co-official languages in Spain, the law allowed the translation or respelling of names to the official languages.

María

Regarding forenames, for religious (Christianity) reasons, in a custom that is in some decline but by no means a thing of the past, girls were commonly named after Mary, mother of Jesus (the Virgin Mary), with the addition of the name of one of her temples, a geographical location where someone had a vision of her, or a religious concept. To avoid confusion, a woman omits the "Mary of the..." part of her name and uses only the last, except on official documents and very formal occasions. So, the real names of Ángeles, Pilar and Luz (literally Angels, Pillar and Light) are almost surely María de los Ángeles, María del Pilar and María de la Luz. Each of these is considered a single (composed) name. A girl could be named only María, however.

María can be part of a male name if prefixed by a masculine one: for example, José María Aznar (this also occurs in naming conventions in other cultures, such as that of German author Erich Maria Remarque). Conversely, a girl could be named María José (José referring to Saint Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary). Other usages are possible, like José del Pilar, who could be called either José or Pilar. This usage for male names is falling rapidly out of use.

Number of names

Spanish official records keep at most two forenames and two surnames per person. However, people can be baptized with more than two forenames, which is a frequent practice among the royalty.

People can also keep track of more than two surnames. This is most frequent in Spain's Basque Country. For example, the founder of Basque nationalism, Sabino Arana, demanded several Basque surnames from his followers to certify that there was no admixture of "foreigners" in their ancestry.

Spanish surnames among Filipinos

On November 21, 1849 the Spanish administration of the Philippines, under the authority of Governor General Narciso Clavería, decreed a systematic distribution of family names and the implementation of the Spanish naming system for the use of the natives.

With the Clavería decree the Catálogo Alfabético de Apellidos ("Alphabetical Catalogue of Surnames") was produced. It was a collection of surnames mostly from Spain, though many were also native Filipino words of flora and fauna, and Hispanicized Chinese numerals; which is why so many Spanish-sounding surnames found among Filipino cannot be found among the peoples of the Hispanic world, as many are merely Hispanic in sound.

Surnames of Spanish nobility, as well as surnames belonging to the Spanish colonial administrators in the Philippines (which had acquired connotation of prestige in the archipelago) were explicitly prohibited.

The colonial authorities implemented this decree mainly because too many early Christianized Filipinos named themselves after religious instruments and saints. Apparently, Christianization had worked much too well in that there were soon too many people surnamed "de los Santos", "de la Cruz", "del Rosario", "Bautista", etc. This caused consternation among the Spanish authorities, as it added difficulty to administration efforts.

Another custom deemed unacceptable by the Spanish, was that Filipino siblings took different last names, as they always had done before the Spaniards. All these "problems" resulted in a less efficient system of collecting taxes.

Because of the mass implementation of Spanish surnames and the Iberian naming system in the Philippines, among Filipinos a Spanish surname does not indicate Spanish ancestry. Of the Philippine population, only around 3.6% is comprised of Spanish-mestizos (those of mixed Filipino and Spanish ancestry).

See also: Hispanic culture in the Philippines.

Other languages in Spain

Speakers of other languages in Spain (Catalan, Basque, Galician, Astur-Leonese, Aragonese, Aranese) whose names had been rendered as Spanish equivalents (often due to the language politics of the Franco era) and who now wish to return to their vernacular name, enjoy a simplified name-change procedure in their respective autonomous community.

Portuguese names

General pattern

In countries where Portuguese is spoken, the pattern is similar to the Spanish one, except that the maternal surname is placed before the paternal surname. In some cases, people may have up to four different surnames.

A child receives his or her maternal and paternal names, for example, Joana Santos Abreu, but many children receive two first names and several surnames, e.g. Joana Filipa Santos Abreu, Joana Filipa Santos Pereira Abreu or Joana Filipa Melo Santos Pereira Abreu. In every case, the maternal surnames are placed before the paternal surnames. This person will probably become known by her final (paternal) surname, Joana Abreu.

As a side note, it is quite common in Brazil, that someone will prefer to be called by his or her least common surname. Examples of common surnames in Brazil are Silva, Souza (Sousa), * Santos and Cavalcanti (the last one of Italian origin). Therefore, even if someone inherits one of these surnames from his/her father, the maternal surname will be used instead. One notable example of this was Formula One great Ayrton Senna da Silva, who chose to be known as Ayrton Senna.

Names of married women

In Portugal a woman may adopt her husband's surname (or surnames), but she still keeps her maiden names. For example, if Maria Melo Santos marries José Pereira Abreu, her name may become Maria Melo Santos Abreu. In ancient times this was rather uncommon, and even if women went by her husband's surname, they did not adopt it officially. However, in the 20th century (particularly during the Estado Novo), this practice became almost obligatory. This sometimes caused some confusing situations, for example when a woman named Maria Lima Silva married a man named José Lima, her name would become Maria Lima Silva Lima. Nowadays, fewer women adopt, even officially, their husbands' names, and among those who do so officially, it has become increasingly common not to use it either in their professional or informal life. In Portugal, since 1977, husbands too can adopt their wives' surname, but this is infrequent.

In Brazil until the recent reform of the Civil Law women had to take their husbands' surnames; while not doing so was seen as evidence of concubinate. The mandatory adoption of the new name lead to unusual combinations, like in the uncommon case of both nubents having the same surname. This custom has been fading since the 1970s and nowadays it is rarely found, due to the cumbersome need to update registries, documents, etc. after the name change and back again in the event of divorce.

Number of names

It is not uncommon that a married woman has two given names and six surnames, the last two coming from her husband. In addition, some of these names may be composite (with more than one word), so that a full feminine name can have more than 12 words. For instance, the name 'Maria do Carmo Mão de Ferro e Cunha de Almeida Santa Rita Santos Abreu' would not be surprising in a married woman. 'Mão de Ferro' (iron hand) and 'Santa Rita' (after Saint Rita of Cascia) count only as one surname each. In this case, 'Santos Abreu' would probably have come from this woman's husband.

In Brazil, due to slavery, the general rules are more fluid and interesting exceptions may happen. Neither slaves nor Indians had Iberian surnames (slaves were even forbidden to use their distinct African names and were christened with a common Portuguese given name). While slavery persisted, slaves need to have distinct names only within the plantation (fazenda or engenho) to which they belonged. This explains why so many archaic or uncanny names were resurrected in Brazil. Freed slaves would adopt a name referring to their job (like "Serrador", sawman or "Sapateiro", shoemaker). After the end of slavery, the common practice was to give the slaves one of the surnames of their former owner but this did not ensure all of them having surnames, as many slaves had already fled the farms or were born in quilombos. People without surnames were very common in Brazil for decades, but they eventually adopted as surname what had been a given name ("Martinho", "Abraão", "Jorge", etc.) or were given an arbitrary common surname. Among these "Silva" (from the jungle), "Costa" (from the coast), "[dos Santos" (of the Saints) and "da Mata" (of the Woods) were the most common. However, as recently as 1996 you could still occasionally come across a woman named only "Maria" or a man called only "José Carlos".

The name 'Maria'

Because Maria (like English Mary, from Hebrew Miryam, via Latin Maria) was (especially in the past) extremely common as the first of two given names, women named Maria are usually known by their second given name, which can even be a masculine name. For instance, women with the name 'Maria de Lurdes' are called 'Lurdes' (after Lourdes, the place of a Marian apparition). 'João' (John) is a masculine name, but many women have 'Maria João' as given names and are informally called only 'João'.

The particle 'de' in Portuguese names

In Portuguese naming conventions, the particle 'de' is only used preceding a toponymic surname. For instance, before the surname "Couto," a toponym. Thus, 'de' is used to indicate the place of origin of the person or family. Example: José (given name) Antunes de Couto; literally, of Couto. When a toponymic surname is followed by another toponymic surname, either the particle 'de' is again used before the surname, or 'e' (and) is used instead. Example: José Antunes de Couto de Sousa (literally of Couto of Sousa) or José Antunes de Couto e Sousa (literally, of Couto and Sousa). 'De' should never precede non-toponymic surnames, such as the patronymic 'Antunes.' The use of de to indicate a noble lineage is a recent and artificial affectation, copied from the naming conventions of other European countries. It is technically incorrect, and generally held as snobbish.

See also

Note

  • "Teresa I was named in baptism, a clean and short name, without addings or embellishments, or furnishings of dons and dans; "Cascajo" was my father; and I, as your wife, am called "Teresa Panza" (that should in good reason be "Teresa Cascajo", but laws are executed."

External links

Names by culture | Catalan culture | Catalan language | Spanish culture | Spanish language | Spanish surnames | Portuguese culture | Portuguese language | Naming conventions

Spanische Namen | Hispanaj kaj hispanlingvaj personaj nomoj | Iberische en Ibero-Amerikaanse namen

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Iberian naming customs".

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