Spanish naming customs

Spanish names are the traditional way of identifying, and the official way of registering, a person in Spain. They are composed of a given name (simple or composite[a]) and two surnames (the first surname of each parent). Traditionally, the first surname is the father's first surname, and the second is the mother's first surname. Since 1999, the order of the surnames in a family in Spain is decided when registering the first child, but the traditional order is nearly universally chosen (99.53% of the time).[2][b]

José García TorresMaría Acosta Gómez
Pablo García Acosta

The practice is to use one given name and the first surname generally (e.g. "Penélope Cruz" for Penélope Cruz Sánchez); the complete name is reserved for legal, formal and documentary matters. Both surnames are sometimes systematically used when the first surname is very common (e.g., Federico García Lorca, Pablo Ruiz Picasso or José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) to get a more distinguishable name.[5] In these cases, it is even common to use only the second surname, as in "Lorca", "Picasso" or "Zapatero". This does not affect alphabetization: "Lorca", the Spanish poet, must be alphabetized in an index under "García Lorca", not "Lorca" or "García".

Spanish naming customs were extended to countries under Spanish rule, influencing naming customs of Hispanic America and Philippines to different extent.

  1. ^ "Ley de 8 de junio de 1957 sobre el Registro Civil". BOE (in Spanish). Articles 53 & 54
  2. ^ Larrañeta, Amaya (2 July 2018). "La libre elección del orden de los apellidos no incrementa el uso del materno en primer lugar". 20minutos.es – Últimas Noticias (in Spanish). Retrieved 1 May 2019.
  3. ^ "Royal Decree 193/2000, Of 11 February, Amending Certain Articles Of The Civil Registration Regulations (Spain)". www.global-regulation.com. Retrieved 29 November 2023.
  4. ^ Spanish Yearbook of International Law: 1999-2000 ISBN 9789041121929 p. 251
  5. ^ "Normalización del nombre de autor en las publicaciones científicas". Biblioteca Universitaria LPGC (in Spanish). Retrieved 14 June 2017. Puedes usar sólo el primer apellido si es poco frecuente. Ejemplo: Germán Oramas


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