Middle Name - Spain and Hispanic America

Spain and Hispanic America

See also: Spanish naming customs and Hispanic American naming customs

In Spain and Spanish America the traditional composition of personal names is different. In the name Juan Pedro Gómez Martínez, Juan Pedro are the given names, Gómez is the father's surname, and Martínez the mother's surname. Argentina is largely an exception, as most Argentinians' identity is recorded at birth using only the father's surname.

Many people have two given names (Juan Pablo, María Claudia) but use only one. In the case of women whose first name is María, it is not uncommon for the second name to be used alone. Other names, however, are considered as a unit, and often used together. Examples are José Luis and Juan Carlos. People with those names will tend to use both names together, rather than only the first name José or Juan. In some cases, people use nicknames that include part of both names (Marijose for María José, Juanjo for Juan José), but this is usually informal.

Traditionally, a person's surname is compounded by the father's surname (originally the paternal grandfather's last name) and the mother's last name (originally the maternal grandfather's last name). The first surname, that of the father, is the main one, but people commonly use both, making it easier to tell the father from the son, something harder to do in the US if both share the same first name. The son of Juan Carlos Pérez Larios and Susana Estela Ríos Domínguez, if given the same first name as his father, would be Juan Carlos Pérez Ríos. Pérez is the "important" last name and the one used if only one is needed. Another example is the father-and-son Puerto Rican baseball players known in English as Sandy Alomar, Sr. and Sandy Alomar, Jr.. In Spanish, their names are respectively Santos Alomar Conde and Santos Alomar Velázquez. Those so named may encounter difficulties in English-speaking countries with the way they are addressed in letters and formal documents. Since it is usual in these nations to have only one surname, it is assumed that the last word in a person's name is the surname, hence Gabriel García Márquez becomes Gabriel Marquez: a name they could not identify with. Legal documents based on passports or similar identification are a common source of this problem.