Spanish Family Names (2024)

• Some Theory
  • Introduction
  • Mixed first names
  • Nicknames
  • Compound first names
  • Compound surnames
  • Advanced stuff
    • the -ez suffix
    • accents
• Some Examples
  • An Extreme Case
• Conclusions
  • Disadvantages
  • Advantages

Introduction

You may wonder why people from Spanish speaking countries have such longnames. This is because we have usually two family names (surnames), whennot more.

Following an ancient tradition, when a child is born, he/she receives thefirst surname from the father and the second surname is the first surnameof the mother. In Portuguese speaking countries also use two family names,but for them the mother's surname comes first. In my opinion this is betterbecause you know for certain who the mother is, but in some cases one maynot be so sure about the father.

e.g. Juan Martínez Escudero + Marta VillanuevaCortés => Juan Martínez Villanueva

This way when a woman marries a man, she never losses her maiden surname,and her family name is carried by her descendents (although just for onegeneration). As you see, Spain has always been regarded as a country ruledby machos, but we respect more the women's dignity in this sense.

You may think this was simple, ...

Compound Surnames

Well, things can get more complicated. People sometimes merge their familynames, creating compound names. This can be done for several reasons:

• the don't want to lose the family name of the mother in the next generation,
• they belong or pretend to belong to the aristocracy,
• or they have family names that are very common (like López, Fernández, García, ...) and they want to distinguish themselves from the masses.

e.g. Francisco García Carrión marries Ana Martínez Botella and he is proud of her mother's family name, so he decides to change hisfirst family name to García-Carrión so that his son is called Pedro García-Carrión Martínez

Another source of multiple-word surnames is the use of prepositions andconjunctions. If your surname is the name of a common thing, the name ofa place, a first name, or simply you are old fashioned, then you add a de (of), which is similar to the German von or the Dutch van.

e.g. Bosque[forest] becomes del Bosque, Peña [rock] is de la Peña, Viña [vine] is de la Viña, ...

Until the 60's the Spanish census and other official registers used the and conjunction (y) to separate the first and second surnames. This was useful when therewere compound surnames and one can not tell where does the second surnamebegin. Nowadays a slash (-) is used to group the members of a compound surname.

e.g. this example has all the attributes described before.

Do you think that this was simple?

Compound First Names

Well, then you must consider that in most region, specially in Latin America,people like to give their children several first (Christian) names, usuallytwo or three, so that they are protected by the greatest number of Saints^*. Traditionally one of the names had to be the Saint of the Birthday.

This specially true for women. Up to my generation, most women have thename María. This is why most women use the other first name or a nickname. Usuallythe second name is abstract because it specifies the name of a Madonna,like Esperanza [hope], Concepción [conception], Dolores [pain], Encarnación [incarnation],

e.g. names like, María de las Mercedes, María José, Carlos Alberto, Juan Carlos, etc. are very common.

Do you still think that this is simple?

Mixed First Names

Well, in order to maximize the divine protection^* some people have both a male and a female name. The first name will tellyou the sex of the person.

So if you meet someone that is called José María, don't call him María because he is male. The same way, if you know someone called María José, don't call her José, because she will become angry with you. Usually only the names of María and José are borrowed from the opposite sex.

^* Nowadays most people do not chose the names of their children because ofthis divine protection, but for aesthetic reasons or to honor an antecesor.

Was this all?

Nicknames

Well, as names are very long, people use nicknames (pretty much like Lizisto Elisabeth, Bob is to Robert or Bill is to William). This is only usedby the family and friends, so don't use this if you are trying to make businesswith her/him or if he's the president of a State.

e.g. Some common nicknames are:

Advanced stuff

If your curiosity hasn't been satisfied yet, then read this section.

the -ez suffix

It is suprising the number of Spanish surnames end in ez. This is because it means "son of", like the suffix -son and -sen in many German and Scandinavian languages. In Portuguese the -ez becomes a -es.

e.g. Fernández is the son of Fernando [Ferdinan]

Martínez is the son of Martín [Martin]

Rodríguez is the son of Rodrigo [Rodrico]

Notice that someone called Pérez does not have to be the son of Pere [Pedro= Peter], it only means that one of her/his antecesors happened to be calledPedro (who probably was a knight in the mediaval ages)

accents

Suprisingly almost all surnames that end in -ez have an accent (called tilde in Spanish). This is because Spanish, unlike English completely specifieshow a word should be pronounced. The accent is written when the a syllbleother than the standard one should be stressed, so accents are rare butcompulsory.

You may have seen that many Latinos/Chicanos in the USA don't write theaccents on their surnames, this is because they have Anglicized their surnames,or someone has done it for you (perhaps a computer)

My Case

My complete name is Pablo Molinero Fernández, Molinero is my father's firstsurname and Fernández is my mother's first surname. If I want to use a shorterform I use Pablo Molinero. I only use Pablo Fernández when I want to fool the IRS (just kidding).

An Extreme Case

If you followed all the explainations until now you wouldn's be surprisedthat someone told you that his name was

who is just considering all the names up to the second generation:

You can see that the number of surnames augments exponentially with thenumber of generations that are considered.

In any case you sould not worry of seeing a name as long as this, unlesssomeone is trying to pull your leg (like me).

Disadvantages

• The main disadvantage is that you have to write more than other people whenfilling up official forms.
• Another disadvantage is that people get confused whenever you go to a non-Spanishspeaking country and then you have to write HTML pages like this one.

Advantages

• Privacy,
  • There is no need to use Jr., Sr., III (and so on) whenever the same first (Christian) name is used by different generationsof the same family. My father is also called Pablo and he never reads mymail, because his second surname is different than mine.
  • Also by no giving away your second family name you can protect your privacy.
• Distinction/Indexing
  • One of the main advantages is that you have more chances to find your friend'stelephone number in the phone book.
• Easier for women
  • Women don't need to change their family names along their lives (this must be painful, specially for the ones that get married several times).
  • They also know that their children will bear her family name.

Page maintained by Pablo Molinero Fernández ()

Last modified: Sun Apr 21 16:39:24 1996