Fairly common practice, where I’m from (Midwest/Appalachia). My mother did it that way, when she married, as did most of my aunts, and I’m pretty sure that so did my sister and grandmother.
KarlGrenze, asking a person is always the best policy, but sometimes it’s just not possible. Suppose you’re working in personnel, and you’ve got a six-inch stack of applications to go through. When you come to a name like “John Ryan Smith” (using English examples, since I’m not familiar with Spanish names), you have to know whether that person gets filed under “Smith, John Ryan” or “Ryan Smith, John”. In English, we usually resolve that ambiguity with the hyphen, so the second example would be “Ryan-Smith, John”.
If you encountered this situation in Puerto Rico, how would you resolve it? Suppose, for instance, that Mike Ryan married Carmen Gomez, and had a son Joe. He’d be named “Joe Ryan Gomez”, right? Now, suppose that Carmen’s brother Carlos moves to the mainland, and in keeping with the English custom, drops his wife’s name, and gives his son the first name “Joe” and the middle name “Ryan”. He’d then be named “Joe Ryan Gomez”. Now both if both these boys apply for a job, what does the personnel agent do?
If you think about it, women changing their names when they get married makes as much sense as using inches and pounds instead of metric units. It is just that Americans will put up with things that make no sense just because they are traditional. The only justification for these things is that they are traditional and not too harmful.
yes.
most icelandic people can trace their families back at LEAST 7 generations… but that’s easier with a population of 1/2 million…descended from 5000.
FYI
most modern studies on genetics are carried out in iceland because of the reasons above. the breast cancer risk determinant gene was discovered there, for example.
names in phone books in iceland are filed under first names,
so Bjork Siggisdottir
is found under Bjork, S
if several people share the same name, say 4 men called
Magnus Magnusson they might be filed under occuptaion as well.
so, Magnus Magnusson, electrician versus Magnus Magnusson lawyer.
True, but there are six listings under “Hernán” as a surname in the Panama City phone book (plus about a bazillion Hernándezes), which is why I mentioned it. Care to guess which are the surnames of Carlos Loo Chan, Guido Walker Fletcher, or Abraham Hasky Btesh, also also listed in the Panama City phone book? (In the phone book many people include their mother’s name in the listing but many do not).
Well, that’s what last names are for, in the first place - keeping track of people. If we only had to deal with people we knew personally, first names and nicknames would be enough.
There’s not a big problem in social situations or when I actually know the person. But I write scientific articles in which I must often list references written by Spanish-surnamed authors. It can often be a problem trying to figure out how to alphabetize such references, because of the variation in practice. And of course asking the person generally is not an option.
Mind you, I like the Spanish convention in many ways, because it provides automatic recognition for the mother’s family name, as well as a way for a woman to retain her maiden name (in part). However, because the convention is inconsistently applied even within Spanish-speaking countries, in my experience it leads to much more potential confusion than the English system. The problem is not with the convention so much as with the inconsistency of application.
Chronos, when someone aplies for a job, they usually fill out a form, right? In it, it mentions to write the FirstName, MiddleName, and LastName. One of them will write Ryan as the MiddleName and the other will write Ryan as the LastName.
sigh
My three original questions are answered. Ok, so I still find it a bit confusing, but I am not familiar with it. And I still dislike that even if I write my 2 last names under the last names part, they call me by my second last name. I would prefer both, or at least alphabetized my name with the first one I wrote. But I leave it up to you, moderators whether to close this thread, move it, or keep it open.
In Texas, a person may legally be called whatever name he/she wishes. The only caveat is that the name chosen cannot be used to commit fraud.
Anyway, in my wife’s family, all of the people at her level of the family tree are women. Therefore, in “traditional” naming, my wife’s family name would end with her uncle and father (two people!) – the oldest males in her family.
To preserve her family’s name, my wife insisted that we use her surname in our son’s name. He has four names: Christopher Michael Smith God (for example). We did not intend to use a hyphen, but in preparing his birth record and social security forms, the hospital spelled his name Smith-God. That is what was on his original social security card.
This seemed a minor problem, so we ignored it. This came back to haunt us when I filled out our first 1040 tax form with his name being “Christopher M. God”. The IRS was not amused. His name did not match the social security number, so clearly he did not exist. They disallowed his deductions, child care, etc., etc. They also threw out his older sister (whose name did match her number).
We ultimately changed his social security information to reflect no hyphen in his name. His new card says “Christopher M S God”.
I only tell this story here to point out how important a little hyphen can be.
Middle names can be important. When I was in electronics school, there was another student with the same first and last (family) name as myself. Only the middle name differed. He got parking tickets. I got called to the office. The differing middle name sorted things out quickly…
Actually I don’t remember seeing much hyphenation (:)) going on until fairly recently. The practice seems to have started in the 70’s, as a result of the women’s movement I assume.
I personally think it makes a lot of sense for both parties to keep their own names, with the children getting mom’s name. This is how it’s done in some “primitive” societies, and it sure makes genealogy simple.
Without going a lot of trouble, it’s difficult to be sure who the father is anyway.
According to my experience, living both in and near Mexico, both surnames are usually used only if the first (paternal) name is extremely common, or if there is a need to differentiate.
For example in Mexico, “Fox”, “Zedillo”, “Salinas” will be used alone to refer to refer to the presidents with those names, however others would be called “Lopez Portillo” and “Diaz Ordaz” to avoid confusion with other Lopez and Diaz presidents.
If we did this in the US, we could perhaps distinguish Presidents “Johnson Baines” and “Bush Pierce” from Presidents Johnson and Bush. (Sidebar, is G.W. Bush related to Franklin Pierce?)
The most unwieldy name I have ever encountered, which I supposed reflected a cross of blue-blood WASP and Southwest Hispano was a guy named “Justin Malcolm-Cyril Unrue-Flores”. (Yes a double hyphening!).