What’s in a surname? For many people from Spain and Latin America, it’s about who your father is and who your mother is.
The tradition of using two surnames helps clearly identify familial relationships in much of the Spanish-speaking world. But in the United States, having two surnames can be a bureaucratic headache, or worse.
More than 68 million people in the U.S. identify as ethnically Hispanic, according to the latest census estimates. Many of them use two surnames.
One famous example can be found in the birth name of Puerto Rican rap superstar Bad Bunny, who is set to perform in the halftime show at this weekend’s Super Bowl. His given name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, after his father Tito Martínez and his mother Lysaurie Ocasio.
But there is more to the origin story of Hispanic surnames.
How are Hispanic surnames formed?
In Spain and most Latin American countries, surnames are composed of two names. The first name is from the father and the second from the mother, with some exceptions.
Here is how it works. If Victoria’s father is named Daniel Flores Garcia, and her mother is named Ana Salinas Marquez, her surnames will be Flores Salinas.
Women often keep their birth names when they marry, but laws and traditions vary by country. Women sometimes append the husband’s paternal surname. An older way to do this is using “de,” which means “of” as part of the name.
So if Victoria Flores Salinas marries Carlos Sandoval Cruz, she will likely remain Victoria Flores Salinas. But in some countries she might become Victoria Flores Sandoval or Victoria Flores de Sandoval. Other variations are also possible, like appending Sandoval after Salinas.
Regardless, if Victoria and Carlos have a child named Francisco, his full name will be Francisco Sandoval Flores.
How does this work in the United States?
People with typical Hispanic surnames who live in the U.S. often simply use the paternal surname to conform with the norm of a single last name. So in the United States, Francisco Sandoval Flores might just go by Francisco Sandoval.
However, people unfamiliar with these naming conventions sometimes assume the father’s name is a middle name, not a surname.
To avoid that problem, some people continue to use both surnames. Still others hyphenate the two names. Occasionally, people even squish the two names together. Susana Pimiento has had to use all three of these strategies in the more than 20 years since she moved to the U.S.
Making sure official documents match, almost
Pimiento owns a translation and interpreter services agency in Austin, Texas, but is originally from Colombia. Her full name is Susana Pimiento Chamorro, but she uses that only for official government business. Even then, things can get tricky.
When she went to get a driver’s license for the first time in Texas, the only way they would allow her to keep her two surnames was by hyphenating them.
“I could have dropped my mother’s last name, but then it wouldn’t have matched with my passport,” she said.
Some airlines only allow one surname on a ticket, so she has to run both of her surnames together as if they were one word.
When she got a green card, things were even worse. The government issued it with her husband’s name “not even in the American way, but in the old Latin American way,” she said. “So I was Susana de Hammond. Like ‘of Hammond.’”
She had to return the card, which did not match any of her other documentation. It was a year before the government finally issued a new one with her actual name. In the meantime, she had to seek special permission to leave the U.S. so she could travel for work.
“Before I got married, I told my husband, ‘I’m not taking your name, you know? There is no way’,” she said. “So then when my green card came with Susana de Hammond, we laughed. We thought that it was a joke. But, oh my gosh, it was so hard to straighten it out!”
