Spanish naming customs are those practiced in Spain. They are similar to those in other Spanish-speaking countries. In Spain, a person's name consists of a given name (simple or composite) followed by two family names (surnames). The first surname was traditionally the father's first surname, and the second the mother's first surname. In Spain this order may now be reversed, according to a new gender equality law.
In most situations, the practice is to use one given name and the first surname only, the full name being used in legal, formal, and documentary matters. For differences in Hispanic American usages, see Hispanic American naming customs.
Read more about Spanish Naming Customs: Naming System in Spain, Denotations, Spain's Other Languages
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“How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)