Spanish surname

Spanish naming customs are historical traditions for naming children practised in Spain. According to these customs, a person's name consists of a given name (simple or composite) followed by two family names (surnames). Historically, the first surname was the father's first surname, and the second the mother's first surname. In recent years, the order of the surnames in a family is decided when registering the first child, but the traditional order is still largely the choice. Often, the practice is to use one given name and the first surname only most of the time (e.g. Miguel de Unamuno), the complete name being typically reserved for legal, formal, and documentary matters; however, 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) so as to get a more customized name. In these cases, it is even common to use only the second surname, as in 'Lorca', 'Picasso' or 'Zapatero'. This does not affect alphabetization: discussions of 'Lorca', the Spanish poet, must be alphabetized in an index under 'García Lorca', never 'Lorca'.We have to start with the history of the gypsies in Spain. They gained a bad reputation because of the minor crimes they had to commit to survive. They did not have any kind of jobs, they had to do something to live, and of course this created hostility. And Flamenco was the music of the Gypsies, so many high society people did not accept it – they said Flamenco was in the hands of criminals, bandits, et cetera. And the girls, that maybe liked dancing or singing, their parents said, 'Oh no, you want to be a prostitute!'. Spanish naming customs are historical traditions for naming children practised in Spain. According to these customs, a person's name consists of a given name (simple or composite) followed by two family names (surnames). Historically, the first surname was the father's first surname, and the second the mother's first surname. In recent years, the order of the surnames in a family is decided when registering the first child, but the traditional order is still largely the choice. Often, the practice is to use one given name and the first surname only most of the time (e.g. Miguel de Unamuno), the complete name being typically reserved for legal, formal, and documentary matters; however, 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) so as to get a more customized name. In these cases, it is even common to use only the second surname, as in 'Lorca', 'Picasso' or 'Zapatero'. This does not affect alphabetization: discussions of 'Lorca', the Spanish poet, must be alphabetized in an index under 'García Lorca', never 'Lorca'. Currently in Spain, people bear a single or composite given name (nombre in Spanish) and two surnames (apellidos in Spanish). A composite given name comprises two (or more) single names; for example Juan Pablo is considered not to be a first and a second forename, but a single composite forename. The two surnames refer to each of the parental families. Traditionally, a person's first surname is the father's first surname (apellido paterno), while their second surname is the mother's first surname (apellido materno). For example, if a man named Eduardo Fernández Garrido marries a woman named María Dolores Martínez Ruiz and they have a child named José, there are several legal options, but their child would most usually be known as José Fernández Martínez. Spanish gender equality law has allowed surname transposition since 1999, subject to the condition that every sibling must bear the same surname order recorded in the Registro Civil (civil registry), but there have been legal exceptions. Since 2013, if the parents of a child were unable to agree on the order of surnames, an official would decide which is to come first, with the paternal name being the default option. The only requirement is that every son and daughter must have the same order of the surnames, so they cannot change it separately. Since June 2017, adopting the paternal name first is no longer the standard method, and parents are required to sign an agreement wherein the name order is expressed explicitly. The law also grants a person the option, upon reaching adulthood, of reversing the order of their surnames. However, this legislation only applies to Spanish citizens; people of other nationalities are issued the surname indicated by the laws of their original country. Each surname can also be composite, with the parts usually linked by the conjunction y or e (and), by the preposition de (of), or by a hyphen. For example, a person's name might be Juan Pablo Fernández de Calderón García-Iglesias, consisting of a forename (Juan Pablo), a paternal surname (Fernández de Calderón), and a maternal surname (García-Iglesias). There are times when it is impossible, by inspection of a name, to correctly analyse it. For example, the writer Sebastià Juan Arbó was alphabetised by the Library of Congress for many years under 'Arbó', assuming that Sebastià and Juan were both given names. However, 'Juan' was actually his first surname. Resolving questions like this, which typically involve very common names ('Juan' is rarely a surname), often requires the consultation of the person involved or legal documents pertaining to them.