Spanish naming customs

Spanish naming customs are traditions for naming children as used in Spain.

A person's name consists of a given name (simple or composite) followed by two surnames. Historically, the first surname was the father's first surname, and the second the mother's first surname.

In recent years, the order of the surnames in a family is done when registering the first child. However, the traditional order is still largely the choice. Often, the practice is to use one given name and the first surname most of the time (e.g. "Miguel de Unamuno" for Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo). The complete name being usually reserved for legal, formal, and documentary matters.

Both surnames are sometimes used when the first surname is very common (e.g., Federico García Lorca, Pablo Ruiz Picasso or José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) to get a more customized name. In these cases, it is even common to use only the second surname, as in "Lorca", "Picasso" or "Zapatero". This does not affect alphabetization: "Lorca", the Spanish poet, must be alphabetized in an index under "García Lorca" and not "Lorca".

Spanish Naming Customs Media

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  Spanish provincial surname concentrations: Percentage of population born with the ten most-common surnames for each province. (Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadística 2006)

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  Surname distribution: the most common surnames in Spain, by province of residence.