I was taught in high school (in the US) that people from Spanish speaking countries generally have two last names, their father’s last name and their mother’s last name. The father’s last name is considered to be the primary one. For example, Juan Roberto Lopez Santos might be the child of Guillermo Lopez and Ana Santos and might be referred to socially as Sr. Lopez or Sr. Lopez Santos, but never Sr. Santos except maybe by an ignorant gringo.
How does the maternal surname work for Anglos and others traveling or living in Spanish speaking lands, especially when it comes to government/official forms and whatnot? From personal experience I know that there are some official forms in Puerto Rico that ask for an “apellido maternal”, but I was never in a situation where I had to fill one out. What are you supposed to do if you don’t have one because you aren’t Hispanic? Leave it blank? Put your mother’s maiden name there? Put whatever last name your mother currently uses? Write “no lo tengo”? Does the answer differ between countries (e.g. “In Mexico you leave it blank, in Guatemala you put your mother’s maiden name and in Argentina you pretty much put whatever you want because people never use it socially there and it is not used to match names in databases”)? Bonus question: Do databases in Spanish speaking lands generally treat the ApellidoMaternal column as nullable?
Is a person expected to use Spanish forms of their names and/or spell names with no Spanish variant phonetically? For example, can Karl Lawrence Smith pretty much use that name when traveling through the Andes or would he be expected to introduce himself as Carlos Lorenzo Smít?
I guess each of these questions is actually two. One is to what extent a person is expected to Hispanicize their name socially. The other is to what extent a person must legally do so when filling out official government forms at the visa issuance office or the DMV Mexicano.
Common sense would indicate that tourists would generally not be expected to make much effort to Hispanicize themselves socially but permanent immigrants or extended-stay expatriate students or workers might have some pressure put on them to assimilate.
Whether or not you’re asked for it varies, depending to some extent on the formality of the proceedings. Here in Panama I recently had to file a police report and had to provide my mother’s maiden name. On the other hand, although the entry forms when arriving by air have a space for mother’s maiden name, I always leave it blank. It doesn’t appear on my resident’s visa or on my driver’s license.
When I had to do a contract in Costa Rica, it gave my name in English format together with an annotation that translates more or less as “with no mother’s last name because of his nationality.”
You spell your name as it appears on your passport. In social situations, you would usually pronounce your name as you normally would. However, when I’m giving my name in official contexts or when checking in at a hotel I Hispanicize the pronunciation a little so it’s easier for them to understand how to spell it.
My mother’s maiden name is “O’Rourke,” which between the apostrophe, odd capitalization, and weird spelling gives them conniptions when trying to write it, so I avoid using it whenever possible.
I’ve always put my maiden name as in the “maternal name” box, although I guess I’ve never thought of what’d do if I was a dude- I’d probably leave it blank. Anyone who is reading customs forms is going to be familiar with a wide variety of naming traditions. As long as what is on your passport is somewhere on the form, and you aren’t trying to commit fraud, I think you’ll be fine.
Nobody expects you to change your name. Jose doesn’t become “Joe” when he visits Disneyland, after all. For long-term expats, if your name is hard to pronounce you might pick up a local name just to make things easier, and local people may use variations of your name out of convenience or to joke around. But it’d basically be a nickname, and it wouldn’t be used for official purposes.
The exception I can think of would be in some Chinese systems. When I moved to China I was given a relatively random Chinese name, and that name actually was used on some (but not all) official documents. For example, my work records and files with the local police were under my Chinese name, and while few Chinese people used it with me, people would use it when talking about me with each other. The issue is that some systems, especially in the backwoods, don’t actually accept roman characters. Because of how the Chinese writing system works, there is no good way to write Western names in Chinese characters, so most people just choose a brand new Chinese name and go with that.
Here in Puerto Rico, once the burócrata handling the forms notices you’re an honest-to-goodness nonhispanic s/he should just let the maternal surname field go blank. Ocassionally you meet instead a burrócrata and have to go to a supervisor to advise the underling that no, just because we’re now in Puerto Rico does not mean everybody legally HAS to use the multiple surname.
OTOH if you proceed to have a child while here, when s/he’s issued a Puerto Rico birth certificate, *that *must, by law, list the official registration name as “FATHERSURNAME MOTHERSURNAME, Givenname(s)” if the parental surnames are known.
Given names are no longer “translated” except for royalty (“Príncipe Carlos de Gales, Duque de Cornualles”) and historic figures up to the early 20th Century (“Teodoro Roosevelt”, “Jorge Washington”)
To answer one question, it’s your mother’s maiden name they’re asking for not her married name (which in most cases would be the same as your father’s last name).
The idea in Latin American culture is that the marriage represents a union of the two families. So when John Columbia married Betty Smith, they united the Columbia and Smith families. And then they had a child, whose name is Robert Columbia Smith.
And even then not everywhere (here, for instance, the taking of the husband’s name was a solely social convention in some classes, while the woman’s legal name stays the same through any change in marital status)
This for Spain. The same applies to anybody else with a different name structure: the husband of a friend is Portuguese (maternal lastname before paternal lastname) and getting his paperwork straightened took a while, simply because some Spanish forms will ask for “paternal lastname” and then “maternal lastname”, where others as for “first lastname” and “second lastname”. The first kind are misdesigned anyway, given that not everybody gets a lastname from each parent (foundlings, people whose father took the low-way).
More modern forms (such as any government-issued ID) indicate apellido(s) (surname(s)), but las cosas de palacio van despacio (anything involving the government takes a long time): there are forms around which are just slightly-modernized versions of 19th-century ones.
Although since people aren’t translating names these days, perhaps both English and Spanish should switch to Y Tywysog Siarl, Tywysog Cymru, Dug Cernyw.
I live in Texas and work with bands from Mexico and Central America with some frequency. My IRL first name is difficult to pronounce to Spanish speakers, so I use another of my names, translated to Spanish and switch to the nickname associated with it in (at least) Mexican Spanish. Hence I am know as “Memo”. Just makes the world go round a little easier.
Hmm… Isn’t Infante though a term only for Spanish monarchy? I don’t remember the Hola! magazine (Spain’s high-society magazine) using Infante to address Prince Charles. They do use Infante to address Spanish monarchy, but do not use it with other monarchies. Sort of how the Dauphin (delfín, teehee) is/was a French title.
Interesting. The traditional Anglo understanding of marriage seems to be that a woman joins her husband’s family. The practice of her taking her husband’s last name is a reflection of this. In fact, there used to be a Common Law principle/law known as coverture that effectively treated the wife as property of her husband and devoid of most rights in a similar way to minor children. She had the right to not be murdered but she could not sign contracts or change her legal residence without her husband’s permission or a court order. Any property she obtained was legally her husband’s property and he could take it away from her at any time. Afaik this section of Virginia law serves to negate this law.
Of course, differing opinions on the meaning of marriage became socially acceptable in the 20th century and traditional practices such as married name changes are no longer required in many circles, but are optional.
To extend my example from before, John Columbia Venezuela is the son of Frank Columbia Peru and Mary Venezuela Ecuador. Betty Smith Jones is the daughter of William Smith Johnson and Margaret Jones Allen. John and Betty’s son is Robert Columbia Smith.
Notice that the maternal lines get dropped and the paternal lines are the ones passed on. What you’re really seeing is a union of the two grandfather’s family lines: Robert Columbia Smith is the grandson of Frank Columbia and William Smith.
I confess to being unfamiliar with all the details of royal protocol. It is not unique to Spain, however. French princes were also referred to as “Enfant de France” . (Literally, “Child of France”.) “Dauphin” was actually a territorial title, indicating that the heir apparent held the office of the ruler of the Dauphin province. English uses the word “prince” to mean either “offspring of a monarch” or “ruler of a principality”. Most European languages have separate words for the two concepts.
No, infante is used only for Spanish nobility and does not mean prince (one can be an infante of the House of Alba for example - any of the children and grandchildren of the current Duchess is one). In the case of Felipe de Borbón y Grecia, he is an infante of the House of Borbón and, separatedly, has the titles of Prince of Asturias, Prince of Viana and Prince of Girona, representing the three Crowns which eventually became the current Kingdom of Spain (in geographical order from left to right).
I thought “enfant” was simply the French for (male) child. It’s clearly related to the English word “infant”, but we only use the English word to refer to very small children. In French, a 15 year old is an “enfant”.
Not really. “Enfant” means “child” and generally isn’t used to refer to a teenager (“adolescent” is used instead).
However, “Enfants de France” indeed refered to the children of a king of France, but they were called by whatever land title they had been granted (duke of Anjou, count of Provence, whatever…). They wouldn’t be announced as “the enfant de France Charles”, but rather as “the count of Artois”, for instance.
