So I was learning how surnames work in Spain. Surnames are made from the first surname from Father and first surname from mother.
I also found out that:
When you combine these two facts, it seems like it is a recipe for a lot more name confusion (multiple people have the same full name). Is that an issue that comes up there?
Mexican here. We use the same system, and I think it’s actually less confusing.
The fact that you combine your father’s and your mother’s last name increases the names exponentially, and even of one of your last names is quite commons, chances are the other won’t be. Also, while “no middle name” is correct, it’s incredibly common to have two given names (so your full name would have four parts). Of course there will be hominims, but in my experience they’re exceedingly rare.
Regards,
I’m sure it comes up, as it comes up anywhere but there are composite names (which are similar to but not exactly the same as first and middle names) * and something that I think happens only with Maria , which is that María de los Ángeles , María de los Dolores or María de la Luz might all be addressed as María - or they might be called Ángeles , Dolores and Luz. Both of these factors cut down on “people with the same name” in hte same way as first/middle names do
But even in the US, there will be multiple people with the same full name, if all those names are common. I suspect that the custom of two surnames in Spanish speaking countries eliminates some of this, as Garcia Fernandez will be less common than either one would be separately.
* It’s not always easy to tell the difference between a composite name and a first and middle name in cultures where middle names are used. Sometimes the spelling gives a clue - Annemarie is obviously not a first and middle name but Betty Lou might be a composite name or it might come from a first and middle name.
Heck if you want to sound posh you can have multiple given names, nothing prevents that.
Plus as mentioned there are the names and surnames that are compound phrases. Someone could be María de los Ángeles/ Diana /Lucero // Jiménez/ Ponce de León. Known to friends and neighbors as Magali Jiménez and signing her checks as Angeles Jiménez Ponce.
The background to this system is that the number of unique one-name surnames in Spanish (and Portuguese, which follows the same system) is low compared to other Indo-European languages. So the two-name system was introduced precisely to reduce the probability of two people having the exact same name: There are lots of Hernández, and there are lots of García, but there’s going to be a lot fewer Hernández García.
The downside is that members of the same family will not share the same surname, so it’s more difficult for historians and genealogists to trace families across generation.
I’m an IT guy. You have NO FREAKIN’ IDEA how much work we have to do with accounts like this. For tax purposes, we have to go by Social Security Card names. However, what their government-issued name is verses their use-name makes huge differences when creating e-mails and payroll accounts.
It may be a problem for IT guys in anglophone countries, but in Spain it is no problem at all.
Here is a breakdown in Spanish of the most common Spanish names and given names (José and Antonio win by a big margin, but are no longer among the 34 most popular male given names in 2021, where “Nil” is the 23rd most popular name 
). 78 people ( can only guess: women) were still called Sandalia (sandal, like the shoe) in 2021, their average age was 81.6 years.
Among the names (family names, apellidos) the first 8 (García, Rodríguez, González, Fernández, López, Martínez, Sánchez, Pérez) are very frequent indeed, but then there are a lot of less frequent names. That is enough to ensure variety. There are 1,400,000 Garcías in Spain, the most common name (population as per wikipedia: 48,797,875), so by my calculation there should be around 40,000 people with the name García García. Does not sound like an unsurmountable problem.
Now please someone get me a different rabbit hole to dive into.
Of course. IT systems in Anglophone cultures are designed with Anglophone assumptions about naming and choke on anything that doesn’t slavishly conform to those assumptions, i.e., the entire rest of the world.
It’s not hard, it’s not even expensive, to design data structures to accommodate naming customs the world over. But it is cheap, easy, and thoughtless to just do what your current society does.
I think the issue for IT guys is that they have to use the name on the Social Security card for tax purposes - and then people want to use different names at the same entity for other purposes. It’s not a problem if I’m Doreen Mylastname at work and Doreen Husbandslastname at my kid’s school and Middlename Husbandslastname to friends/family/neighbors.
The problem comes when I want to be Doreen Husbandslastname at work for tax and payroll purposes because I actually legally changed my name when I got married but Doreen Mylastname on my work email and the the name displayed when I make entries into electronic records and telephone directories. I find that a surprising number of people want to do that , mostly because I hear so many people complain (on-line and in person) that just because they changed their name when they got married doesn’t mean they want their email address and the name on electronic records changed. Often, what happens is they have to use the legal name for all purposes. There are also issues when someone hates their first name ,but not enough to actually change it and wants to go by V. Antonio instead of Victor - but it’s fairly easy to connect V. Antonio Garcia to Victor Antonio Garcia and sometimes the IT people will do that. Not so easy if it’s Margaret Clark in payroll but Margaret Williams in email - so who do I email when Margaret Clark’s timesheet has a problem?
My guess is that a large part of the reason it’s not an issue in other countries is because in many (maybe most) other countries women do not legally change their name when they get married - they maybe use or add their husband’s name socially but it wouldn’t be on passports, driver’s license , bank accounts and so on
You got it in one, Doreen :).
And then you run into 10-character limits on usernames for older applications… ::sigh::.
You’re assuming a LOT here.
Many of these software packages weren’t originally written for an international market, and like @doreen says, a lot of what us IT guys are talking about is the idea that there’s a canonical name for a person in a record keeping/governmental way, and then there’s the name they actually use.
We run into it in Anglophone situations all the time as well. Take, for example Charles Doofus III, otherwise known as Trey. His employee paperwork may say “Charles Doofus”, but his email address may be Trey Doofus. Not a problem until the point when you have to try to match those data sets together. You’ve got to be able to definitively tell that Charles and Trey Doofus DOB 9/19/1956 are the same person.
Then it gets more complicated when his son, Charles Doofus IV starts working for the company as a summer intern. Then we’ve got two Charles Doofuses in the system, but one’s Trey Doofus, and the other is Chuck Doofus, and they’re only distinguished by birthday.
And the larger your data set gets, the more likely it is that you may end up with multiple people with the same name and birthday, especially if you’re a national-level enterprise. At my previous job (a national level occupational healthcare provider) we did have multiple names with the same birthdays. Typically they were very common ones- Juan Martinez, or James Smith type names. But they were there- our clinic staff basically had to ask them more identifying information- who do you work for, etc…? In the back of the house, we were kind of screwed if we actually had to match that to anything; there just wasn’t that much to separate Jim Smiths from each other if they had the same birthday.
The reason they did this in the first place is that designers tend to be kind of jealous of data space; if you add an extra field for a mostly unused last name, you increased your database size and complexity and you didn’t actually get anything for it. In 2024, adding a single text field isn’t a big deal, but it was in say… 1994 when a lot of this stuff was being designed.
Not coincidentally, that’s why so many companies used to want SSN; it was a unique identifier for each person that separated EVERY Charles Doofus from each other. Without something like that, IT folks are stuck trying to match on names and birthdates, which is mostly accurate, but still has conflicting stuff like “Charles Doofus” vs. “Charlie Doofus” depending on how Mr. Doofus filled out his form that day for the flu shot or the HR person or the insurance form.
When I worked in IT - not even Spanish-related - we had one woman who had 3 last names in the course of a year. She divorced, started using he maiden name, then remarried.
One of my co-workers went ballistic when the school nurse called and asked for “Mrs. Smith” when we’d only known her as “Ms. Jones”. I imagine too that changing names when they divorce is a way to get rid of the #### and any association with or memory of him, even though the children still have the father’s last name.
Do wives take the husbnad’s name in Spanish speaking countries? Which brings up the question, which I assume is more recent in Spanish culture - but what do women do when they divorce?
The kids could do what one of my nieces did.
When her Mom (my SIL) divorced back in the late 1990s-ish she changed her own last name back to her birth/unmarried name. So far so common.
15-20 years later her by then late 20s unmarried daughter changed her last name from her birth name, that of her father, to the same name as her mother now had, namely Mom’s birth / unmarried / post-divorce name. Take that Dad!
No
Its father’s last name and then mother’s last name for all life.
Or as my female friend rightfully noticed … Its not so much the mothers last name, but the maternal grandfather’s last name (who becomes the mother’s L.N. upon birth)
Wait until you check out Korean and Vietnam. 54% of Koreans and 62% of Vietnamese have 1 of 5 surnames.
Typically, Spanish is Juan Dad’sLastName Mom’sLastName and Portuguese is João Mom’sLastName Dad’sLastName. But this varies by country and age, and includes other subtleties like married combined names y/de/hyphenation or not/etc. So there’s not hard rules so much as tendencies.
I’m not certain if Galicians use a more Spanish or Portuguese style.