Spanish Surnames

[RCarruthers]

How do you deal with Spanish surnames where children's middle name is father's name and last name is mother's surname. Felipe Borbon marries Ramona Aguirre. Child is baptized "Ramon Borbon Aguirre" and in practice in the US uses either Borbon or Aguirre or both. Reunion wants to name children with father's surname, not mother's.

[Frank]

When Reunion enters a default for you in the Edit Person window, it's only a suggestion (based on what most users will want). So, when you add a child and the Edit Person window appears, just press the tab key to select the "Last Name" field content and enter the correct surname.

[Raul de Brigard]

How do you deal with Spanish surnames where children's middle name is father's name and last name is mother's surname. Felipe Borbon marries Ramona Aguirre. Child is baptized "Ramon Borbon Aguirre" and in practice in the US uses either Borbon or Aguirre or both. Reunion wants to name children with father's surname, not mother's.

To my knowledge, that is not quite how Spanish names work, except perhaps in the US. (I am Colombian and my family tree is structured the hispanic way.

The custom is to use two surnames, the paternal followed by the maternal. The father's name is NOT the middle name. Rather, it is the frist of two surnames. Each subsequent generation will continue having their paternal & maternal surnames. SO watch how the names pass from one generation to the next:

Start with José Martín Rodriguez who marries María Alvarado Silva

They have a Male Child: Pedro Martín Alvarado, who marries Sylvia Pizarro Benitez
And a Female Child: Elvira Martín Alvarado, who marries Ernesto Santos Camacho

The Children of Male Child would be: Jaime Martín Pizarro & Ana Martin Pizarro
And the Children of Female Child: Pablo Santos Martín & Lola Santos Martin (the father's name is always the first surname)
Lola Santos Martín then marries Julio Durante Herrera. Now watch what happens to the name of her children of . Their surname will be "Durante Santos," and the Martín surname will have disappeared from their names. Thus, the paternal surname passes through generation after generation on the MALE side of the family, whereas a mother does not pass to her children the name of her maternal lineage.

However what is nice about this system is that you can readily tell who is who in a family, and one doesn´t need to add "Sr." or "Jr." to distinguish among father and son when they have the same first name. A typical conversation might be "Patricia Durante Santos - she that is the daughter of your cousin Lola Santos Martin, sister to your uncle Pablo, and the granddaughter of Elvira Martín Alvarado - Lola married Julio Durante in 1986."

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Now here is a potential source of confusion. Suppose the "Martín" surname is highly respected. Then Lola Santos Martín and her husband, Mr. Durante might regret that the Martín surname does not pass to their children (who would be called Durante Santos) Some families correct for this by using that name as a middle name. For example, one of the daughters could be called Helena Martín Durante Santos.
The Martín name will then appear as a middle name in the Birth or Baptismal Certificate. Many Anglicized Hispanic families will do this even after one generation, since in the US it is not customary to keep two surnames. However that is seldom if ever done in the Hispanic world.

There is yet another aspect of Hispanic naming that should be mentioned here: Married women do not lose their maiden surnames. Thus, in the above example, when "Maria Alvarado Silva" marries José Martín Rodriguez, she doesn´t become Mrs María Martín (as she would in the US). Instead, she is called "María Alvarado Silva de Martín," or "María Alvarado de Martín" for short. Before the 19th century, it would have been "María Alvarado Santos y Martín". Fortunately, in a genealogical tree, it is not necessary for recent generations to add the husband's name in the entry for the wife.

I realize your question dates back many years, but I thought this explanation might help.

debrigard@yahoo.com

[Eliseo]

To my knowledge, that is not quite how Spanish names work, except perhaps in the US. (I am Colombian and my family tree is structured the hispanic way.

The custom is to use two surnames, the paternal followed by the maternal. The father's name is NOT the middle name. Rather, it is the frist of two surnames. Each subsequent generation will continue having their paternal & maternal surnames. SO watch how the names pass from one generation to the next:

Start with José Martín Rodriguez who marries María Alvarado Silva

They have a Male Child: Pedro Martín Alvarado, who marries Sylvia Pizarro Benitez
And a Female Child: Elvira Martín Alvarado, who marries Ernesto Santos Camacho

The Children of Male Child would be: Jaime Martín Pizarro & Ana Martin Pizarro
And the Children of Female Child: Pablo Santos Martín & Lola Santos Martin (the father's name is always the first surname)
Lola Santos Martín then marries Julio Durante Herrera. Now watch what happens to the name of her children of . Their surname will be "Durante Santos," and the Martín surname will have disappeared from their names. Thus, the paternal surname passes through generation after generation on the MALE side of the family, whereas a mother does not pass to her children the name of her maternal lineage.

However what is nice about this system is that you can readily tell who is who in a family, and one doesn´t need to add "Sr." or "Jr." to distinguish among father and son when they have the same first name. A typical conversation might be "Patricia Durante Santos - she that is the daughter of your cousin Lola Santos Martin, sister to your uncle Pablo, and the granddaughter of Elvira Martín Alvarado - Lola married Julio Durante in 1986."

----------
Now here is a potential source of confusion. Suppose the "Martín" surname is highly respected. Then Lola Santos Martín and her husband, Mr. Durante might regret that the Martín surname does not pass to their children (who would be called Durante Santos) Some families correct for this by using that name as a middle name. For example, one of the daughters could be called Helena Martín Durante Santos.
The Martín name will then appear as a middle name in the Birth or Baptismal Certificate. Many Anglicized Hispanic families will do this even after one generation, since in the US it is not customary to keep two surnames. However that is seldom if ever done in the Hispanic world.

There is yet another aspect of Hispanic naming that should be mentioned here: Married women do not lose their maiden surnames. Thus, in the above example, when "Maria Alvarado Silva" marries José Martín Rodriguez, she doesn´t become Mrs María Martín (as she would in the US). Instead, she is called "María Alvarado Silva de Martín," or "María Alvarado de Martín" for short. Before the 19th century, it would have been "María Alvarado Santos y Martín". Fortunately, in a genealogical tree, it is not necessary for recent generations to add the husband's name in the entry for the wife.

I realize your question dates back many years, but I thought this explanation might help.

debrigard@yahoo.comAlthough this is correct, it is also true that in the U.S. many will mistake the paternal surname for a middle name. For example, Alfonso ORTIZ SANTIAGO shows up in some US records as Alfonso Ortiz SANTIAGO, Ortiz being used as a middle name. Some have avoided the confusion by adding a dash; for example: Alfonso ORTIZ-SANTIAGO. (The US Census in Puerto Rico, at least up to 1930, uses "y", meaning "and" > Alfonso ORTIZ y SANTIAGO.)

[clairebettag]

To my knowledge, that is not quite how Spanish names work, except perhaps in the US. (I am Colombian and my family tree is structured the hispanic way.

The custom is to use two surnames, the paternal followed by the maternal. The father's name is NOT the middle name. Rather, it is the frist of two surnames. Each subsequent generation will continue having their paternal & maternal surnames.Thank you, Raul, for this explanation. But how does one work in Reunion to handle the Spanish system for surnames? Does the researcher simply edit each person's card? If so, presumably it follows that the surname search using the index does not work in the same way it normally would. Or am I missing something?

Claire

[AlainFarhi]

Since Reunion did intend to enter surnames in the Spanish fashion. I add the father's name in the Family Name field and the mother's in the Suffix field. The display is correct and the children will carry automatically their father's name. The mother's will have to be manually added.

Incidentally Reunion does not easily allow adding the names or firstnames in a foreign language ( Hebrew , Russian etc).

[clairebettag]

Since Reunion did intend to enter surnames in the Spanish fashion. I add the father's name in the Family Name field and the mother's in the Suffix field. The display is correct and the children will carry automatically their father's name. The mother's will have to be manually added.So researchers need to pay more attention to manual entry, I guess. I'll need to do some test entries to see how the index works in such cases.

[colinc]

I'm not sure what this is/was any more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/04/spanish-naming-customs-changed

Incidentally, for those of you old enough to remember 'My Fair Lady', or even 'Pygmalion', the headline over the story in today's 'Guardian' was Names in Spain are no longer father's domain!

Cheers, Colin