Spanish Naming conventions
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Name Field Guidelines
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SPANISH NAMING CONVENTIONS
Here is a short practical guide on how Spanish names should be dealt with on Wikitree. However, for a comprehensive background briefing on Spanish naming conventions, one may look at Wikipedia:
and also at the Wikitree Free Space page dedicated to Naming Conventions:
PROPER FIRST NAME and MIDDLE NAME
Most Spanish people have two names but many treat them as one composite name. Thus for them the right thing for them to do on Wikitree would be to put BOTH these names into the “Proper First Name” box. Otherwise both boxes should be used (as normal). Do not use the Middle Name field, but instead the entire first name included in the Proper First Name field (& the radio button “no middle name” selected).
LAST NAME AT BIRTH
As always, the names registered on official documents (Birth/Marriage/Death) should be used for establishing both Last Name at Birth and Current Last Names.
In recent times, it is often the custom for Spanish people at birth to take two surnames (family names).
The names generally are of both the paternal and maternal the male lines, of father then mother. Thus: the first is often their father’s first surname (which is his father’s), and the second is often their mother’s first surname (which is her father’s), although depending on the era, the names may be reversed or come from other sources.
example: María del Carmen Flores Lyra
- Proper First Name: María del Carmen
- Preferred First Name: Carmen
- Middle Name: <none>
- Last Name at Birth: Flores Lyra
- Her father’s name was José Esteban Flores Pravia
- Her mother’s name was Dolores Gabriela Lyra Andrade
When supported by records or sources, BOTH surnames (family names) should be put into the “Last Name at Birth” box. Otherwise, put the father's first surname and then the mother's first surname in the "Last Name At Birth" field, without the "de" or "y."
Sometimes Spanish surnames (family names) are connected by “y” (and), thus joining them and effectively making them one name.
In addition, some names have more than one part, having a descriptor which takes the form “of the…”. Example: Gomez de la Torre (of the Tower). Unless there is a baptism record supporting it, the longer surname should go in the "Current Last Name" field, not the "Last Name At Birth" field.
CURRENT LAST NAME
For practices in Spain, please go to the "Current Last Name in Spain" section.
Traditionally, a married woman adds her husband’s first surname to her own surnames after the word “de” (of). For example:
- Rosa Argentina Flores Lyra de Varey
Practices are now changing. In Spain and Chile, women continue to use their maiden names after marriage, and there is a tendency in this direction in some other countries.
Where a married woman takes her husband's name, she may in practice, using the above example, call herself one of the following:
- Rosa Flores de Varey
- Rosa de Varey
- Rosa Argentina Varey (e.g. on her British passport)
In some countries (e.g. Colombia) some women continue to use their maiden name AFTER their married name:
- Rosa de Varey Flores
and in others (e.g. USA or UK) they may “anglicise” their name for daily use:
- Rosa Varey
On Wikitree, it is suggested that, in cases where it is known or can be assumed that a woman added her husband's name to her own upon marriage, the husband’s first surname preceded by “de” be inserted in the “Current Last Name” box.
This then results in the Profile heading (public view) of
- Rosa (Flores Lyra) de Varey
Then the children will be (e.g.) Gabriela Varey Flores or (e.g. in USA or UK) Gabriela Varey
An example of a Descendant tree is:
Note that Portuguese and Brazilian names do NOT follow this convention but have their own. Guidance may be found at:
Current Last Name in Spain
In Spain, a wife does not take her husband's name on marriage. She keeps the name she has been using before and this should be entered under her original name with no entry of the husband's name going in either last names or current last names:
Rosa Flores Lyra
In Spain, married women, with few exceptions, will have the same LNAB and Current Last Name, which is what should be used in WikiTree:
- LNAB: Flores_Lyra
- Current Last Name: Flores_Lyra
- Profile heading (public View): Rosa Flores Lyra
Practical examples of naming conventions in Spain for married women can be seen at the following links:
Example of Spanish naming conventions 1
Example of Spanish naming conventions 2
Other Considerations about Last Names
Common sense must be used, as well. A woman born in Spain who lived all her life in Spain was likely to be known by her maiden surname, whereas if she lived her adult life in the US in the 19th-20th Century, she may have dropped her maiden name and taken her husband's name instead. If however, she was born in the 17th -18th Century, she probably maintained her maiden name both in Spain and in the New World. Regarding double surnames, they can prove a problem as it is easy to assume they are following the rule of taking the father and mother's respective first last names when they are not, for instance Gómez Leandro Muso Muñoz García de Alcaráz is the son of Gonzalo Muso Muñoz and Inés García de Alcaráz. His wife is María Tomasa de Guevara Ponce de León y Alburquerque, her parents being Juan de Guevara Ponce de León and María Alburquerque Leones y Guevara. Their son appears to have only used Muso Muñoz as his last name. The problem here is that Muso, Muñoz, García, Alcarz, de Guevara, Ponce de León, Alburquerque and Leones can and often are single surnames but here are being used in combination with others to form a “single” surname (similar to the English speaking world hyphenating their surnames). Another and easier to understand example is Pedro Navarro Marín. Following the general rule, one might expect his father to be Pedro Navarro and his mother Juana Marín but in fact his father is Pedro Navarro Marín (a double first surname) and Mother Juana Pérez. (* see list below)
Note that if only one surname is used (for either men or women), it is usually the first surname (in the example above, Flores), although there are exceptions, such as for disambiguation. Wikipedia mentions that when the first surname is very common (e.g. Federico García Lorca), it is not unusual to use only the second surname, as in “Lorca”, when referring to him, but that does not affect alphabetization: discussions of "Lorca", the Spanish poet, must be alphabetized in an index under “García Lorca", never "Lorca", i.e., Lorca's LNAB in WikiTree should be Garcia_Lorca-XX.
When a surname is formed with prepositions, articles or conjunctions (de, la, y/e), special rules apply. If a surname begins with a preposition or a preposition and an article, these are not capitalized if they are used with the first name, examples, “María de la Torre”, “Miguel de la Rosa”. However, if the preposition stands alone without the first name, it is capitalized, such as "señora De la Torre", señor "De la Rosa". Conjunctions between last names are always written in lower case, as in "Ortega y Gasset", "Ramón y Cajal", " Joan Miró i Ferrà". Surnames that are formed with a vowel are capitalized, but the preposition and article are not, giving us "Julia de la O Murillo", "Mariana Madrigal de la O".
List of Double Names
Below is a list of some Spanish double or complex names you may come across. These are not names following the usual pattern of father's first and mother's first surname but are effectively “single” surnames that are passed down the generations. The problems they create are to first confuse the unwary as to the identity of the parents. They also are often miswritten in documents by having bits missed and can be easily overlooked. The scribes of early baptisms and other church records were not that scrupulous in what they recorded. An instance is that of two brothers whose last name should have been García Menchirón, whose marriages are recorded by different scribes on the same page. One gave the full name whilst the other only gave Garcia.
- Alburquerque Leones
- de Guevara Ponce de León
- de Vera Miñarro
- Estéban de Alarcón
- Fernández Menchirón
- Fernández de Plazas
- García de Alcaráz
- García de Guevara
- García Menchirón
- García Miñarro
- Ladrón de Guevara
- Leones Alburquerque
- Leones de Guevara
- López Teruel
- Marsilla de Teruel or Marcilla de Teruel
- Martínez Carrasco
- Mateos de Aguilar
- Mateos Montalbán
- Mateos Rendón
- Moya Angeler
- Muso (or Musso) Muñoz
- Navarro de Guevara
- Navarro Leones
- Navarro Marín
- Navarro Rodenas
- Pérez de Meca
- Pérez Monte
- Ponce de León
- Primo de Rivera
- Queipo de Llano
- Soler Blázquez
- Soler Castejón
- Rubio Torreglosa
Additional names can be found at the following link:
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• Last name at birth: Flores Lyra • Current last name: de Varey • Other Last Name(s): Flores, Lyra, Varey
Use of the OLN field provides a few benefits for profile consistency and searching: 1) Provided the first name is known, the search function will find profiles when searched using any of the included surnames. For example, a search for "Rosa Flores" or "Rosa Varey" would identify this profile if the "Other Last Name(s): Flores, Lyra, Varey" is present; if the OLN field is blank, a search for "Rosa Flores" or "Rosa Varey" would NOT identify the existing profile. 2) Existing profiles will be identified when adding a new profile if the OLN field contains the list of applicable surnames. For example, if a new profile is started for "Rosa Flores" or "Rosa Varey", it will show the existing profile for Rosa Argentina Flores Lyra de Varey as an option to connect to rather than creating a duplicate profile. If the OLN field is blank, a new profile for "Rosa Flores" or "Rosa Varey" would NOT identify the existing profile for Rosa Argentina Flores Lyra de Varey. 3) For profiles where the “Current last name” field includes the preposition “de” in front the husband’s surname (Ex: de Varey), the inclusion of the husband’s surname without the “de” in the OLN field will provide the same benefit as points 1 & 2 above. While I don't care for the "AKA" descriptor added to the name by the OLN field, this would be a coding change that isn't user controllable. Using the OLN field, as recommended, would make the example display name "Rosa Argentina de Varey formerly Flores Lyra aka Flores, Lyra, Varey". Obviously, it would be preferred that a search for "Flores" would also show "Flores Lyra" and all other "Flores *" surname profiles but this is apparently more difficult than it sounds as it hasn't been resolved after years of discussion so the use of the OLN field seems to be the best option at this time.
There are many existing, Spanish-name profiles where only the paternal surname was used in the LNAB field so use of the OLN field would also help connect these profiles to those that use the proper naming convention at creation. In reviewing the 1132 profiles with theSincerely, Bo Abney
Alan Chisholm
edited by Alan Chisholm
As this page is meant to cover naming conventions, does their need to be a separate section? I believe the first section (CURRENT LAST NAME) is made redundant by your next section. Do you think it would help if I changed the rest of the page to reflect this? Or, should we leave it and title it differently (for other Spanish-speaking countries)?
I would like to format the new text if you don't mind. And thank you for working on this!
I just left the section headings as I found them. As I understand it, the guidelines first explain the general situation, and then deal with the particular case of Spain. I would prefer them left as they are.
Until some clever person comes up with a new "instruction" that meets all the difficulties, I suppose there will be inconsistency in WikiTree's treatment of the "current last name" problem. I can see no great harm in this. In part, it reflects the fact that custom varies from country to country and has changed over time.
I am now following what I understand to be the practice recommended by our colleague Mindy Silva: treating the last name a person had when she entered on marriage as her "current" last name. Most of the profiles I have been creating have been for Chileans, and here no problem is posed: in Chile everyone, including "conservatives", sees it as quite natural that a person should be known after marriage by the same name as before marriage.
For people living in countries where the custom is different, I am giving the married name in the biography where this seems useful.
edited by Alan Chisholm
I think we agree. My wife is Guatemalan and adds "de Chisholm" to her own surname. Customs vary. But to say that a woman called "Pérez" who marries a Rodríguez has the married last name "Rodríguez" results in the new two-part surname "Pérez Rodríguez", which is an aberration practically anywhere, I'm convinced.
What, please, do you propose that Wiki members creating new profiles of married women should be advised to do about the "married last name"?
Alan Chisholm
The bottom line? The two most common ways for a married woman to appear in family or legal records (certainly in Mexico, and probably in other Latin American countries) are 1) with her paternal surname followed by "DE" and her husband's paternal surname or, 2) without changing the paternal and maternal surnames of her birth. As we've seen elsewhere in this discussion, there may be alternatives, but her paternal surname followed by her husband's paternal surname without the preposition "DE" is virtually never found here and would certainly be considered an aberration. Although they often disagree on other subjects, her five sisters agree.
Whether or not the suggestion might function better with the indexing algorithm used by WikiTree is a completely different discussion with its own reasoning, benefits, and disadvantages.
Unfortunately, the fact remains that the suggestion to put the husband´s surname without "de" as current/married last name for a married woman is unsatisfactory. I would love to read a comment from a WikiTree member who is a woman and of Spanish mother tongue and lives in a Spanish-speakng country. ¿Podemos tener contribuciones?
Alan
Although the use of the preposition "DE" between surnames in Spain and Latin America is not the same as the German VON, not necessarily indicative of nobility, in some cases it may be.
"Lacayo de Briones", above, is an example of a surname taken from a place name or a specific ancestor. In the case of Señor Lacayo, his ancestors adopted the Briones estate to distinguish them from others with the surname Lacayo but born or settled elsewhere. That manner of identifying oneself fell into disuse long ago but is commonly found in the historic record.
The use of the conjunction "Y" between surnames is a practice that was frequently used in Latin America until nearly the beginning of the 20th century, principally to unite two last names or families.
However, great care is needed in its application to genealogy because the "Y" was not always used to separate the paternal and maternal surnames. There are cases in which the two surnames are both taken from the father, or both from the mother, or the mother's surname is placed first. For example, the Caballero de Santiago, Jacinto de Quesada y Figueroa, was always identified in that way (1634), although he was the son of Juan Quesada y Figueroa and Isabel de Bañuelos. In his case, the usage was of his father's two surnames. Jacinto's father, on the other hand, was known as Juan Quesada y Figueroa even though he was the son of Juan Hurtado de Mendoza and María de Quesada y Figueroa. In his case, the usage was of his mother's two surnames. Similar cases abound in the historical record. This particular use of surnames, which sounds arbitrary to us today, was common in earlier times primarily due to special conditions applied to marriage or inheritance.
In many cases, in order to enjoy an inheritance, the inheritor had to use a pre-designated surname. For example, a distant uncle, rich and single, might make it a condition of his nephew's inheritance that the nephew replace his existing surnames with those of his uncle.
It's interesting to note that the "DE" separating last names, as in the case cited above of Lacayo de Briones, sometimes appears between the given name and surname, as is the case of Don Gonzalo de Mora y Fernández. The latter case refers to a title of nobility, Conde de Mora.
Among other examples in which the preposition "DE" is placed between the first and last name and evidently refers to a title of nobility are: Carlos de Lupiá y Roger (Marqués de Lupiá); Mariano de Torres Solanort (Vizconde de Torres Solanort); Fermín de Muguiro y Azcárate (Conde de Muguiro); José Manuel de Guirior y Portal (Marqués de Guirior). To make things even more interesting, the full name of José Manuel de Guirior was José Manuel de Guirior Portal de Huarte Herdozáin y González de Sepúlveda.
edited by Patrick Barnum
The search functionality does NOT support this convention. If LNAB=Berríos Colón, a search for "Berríos" will NOT find the person. Basically, none of the surname functionality works with Spanish names.
What am I missing? I've avoided entering my Puerto Rican wife's entire side of the family into WikiTree because of the naming convention issue.
I don't think they make them one name, they are clearly saying name A and name B
y = and
In Spain, María del Carmen Flores Lyra, everyone knows that Maria's Father's first surnmae is Flores and her Mother's first surname is Lyra.
The reason we would put y in there is to let the non-Spanish speaking community know that it is two surnames, not one.
María del Carmen Flores y Lyra = María del Carmen Flores AND Lyra, or: First name: Maria del Carmen First surname: Flores Second surname: Lyra
Although, even in Spain, I see that they are also using the "y" to let you know that these are two distinct surnames, see for example at the Academy of History: Martín de Andosilla y Arlés http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/19508/martin-de-andosilla-y-arles
I'm not sure what this line means:
"Strictly, a married woman will simply add the husbands first surname after the word de (of). For example:"
In my building, on the mailboxes in the foyer, every married woman has two distinct surnames and each husband has two distinct surnames - there is not a single married woman with a "de" and her husband's surname.
I just doubled checked on a google search and every website I've just read says the same: http://time.com/3940094/maiden-married-names-countries/ https://erikras.com/2009/01/28/whats-the-deal-with-last-names-in-spain/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maiden_and_married_names
"but WITH the "y" in the case of a husband's two-part first surname". Is that appropriate?
Regards Tony Varey
Thanks,
Karen