A last name or two? The maternal or paternal last name? How many surnames can we have? Our children, like us, do not carry the same last names in different parts of the world. There are even places where the last name is not usually used. We will review the use of surnames in the world.
And it is that the affiliation of a person is recognized differently in different places. The order of the surnames is one of the interesting questions about it, and that can change throughout history.
It is even legislated so that these issues do not remain free will, and many of the feminist demands in recent decades have focused on the recovery of women's surnames. Let's see these and others curiosities about surnames in various parts of the world.
How last names are sorted
- In most Spanish-speaking countries, each person usually has two surnames derived from the family of his father and mother, in this order (paternal and maternal surnames, respectively). So in the Hispanic tradition we call ourselves with: first name (one or several), paternal surname and maternal surname.
- According to what we have just seen, in our environment the first name of a person is the first name of his father, the second last name is the first name of his mother.
- In Argentina, traditionally, only the paternal last name was used, not the maternal one, but a bill promoted in 2008 would have planned to homologate this situation to the rest of Spanish-speaking countries.
- Since 2008 the Chilean legislation and since 1999 the Spanish law allow changing the order of the surnames, allowing in this way that, by mutual agreement of the parents, the maternal surname precedes that of the father.
- However, there are places where the mother's last name is usually the first. In the Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal) the same system of two surnames is used, but these are reversed (influence that was rooted in the Canary Islands for several centuries).
The number of surnames in the world
- As we have seen, there are two surnames in the Hispanic tradition.
- But we have more last names: The third last name is our father's second last name, the fourth last name is our mother's second last name, and so on. In this way a person has as many surnames as he wants and corresponds to those of his ancestors, although in the countries only the registration of two surnames is generally allowed. But there we have the nobles who like to add appeals to their business cards ...
- Additionally, Spanish legislation allows the union of two surnames to form a compound surname. This practice is common when the second last name (the one that comes from the mother) is not common and you do not want to lose. By joining both last names into a single compound last name (usually with a hyphen) it ensures that it will not be lost when interspersed with other last names in later generations.
- But in many other countries of the world only the paternal last name is inherited.
- Most European citizens have only one last name: only Spain and Portugal include two last names on the card.
- And, on the opposite extreme, the inhabitants of Tibet and Java often do not use any surnames. Actually, in Tibet there is absolute freedom to nominate children.
If the variety of nicknames is so extensive among countries, let's not forget that each place has also had different ways of naming its descendants throughout history. Soon we will return to more curiosities about surnames in the world.
Because, as we see, the tradition of surnames in the world is very rich and with numerous differences in the number, distribution or training of the way in which we "officially" register our identity, our names.
