17 Facts About Spanish names

Spanish names are the traditional way of identifying, and the official way of registering, a person in Spain.

Each of these two surSpanish names can be composite in itself, with the parts usually linked by:.

Resolving questions like this, which typically involve very common Spanish names, often requires the consultation of the person involved or legal documents pertaining to them.

Spellings of surSpanish names containing the prepositional particle de are written in lower-case when they follow the name, thus Jose Manuel de la Rua and Cunegunda de la Torre, otherwise the upper-case spellings doctor De la Rua and senora De la Torre are used.

Furthermore, language contact led to the creation of multiple hybrid forms, as evidenced by the multiple Catalano-Castillan surSpanish names, found especially in the Valencian Country: Fernandez, Fernandis, Fernandiz, Ferrandez, Ferraniz, Ferranis, etc.

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Sometimes the artistic name consists of the home town appended to the first name ; but many, perhaps most, of such Spanish names are more eccentric: Pepe de la Matrona ; Perico del Lunar ; Tomatito ; Sabicas ; Paco de Lucia, born Francisco Gustavo Sanchez Gomes, was known from infancy after his Portuguese mother, Lucia Gomes.

Many Spanish names can be shortened into hypocoristic, affectionate "child-talk" forms using a diminutive suffix, especially -ito and -cito and -ita and -cita.

Some Basque names without a direct Spanish meaning, are unique to the Basque language, for instance, Eneko, Garikoitz, Urtzi.

Basque names, rather than Spanish names, are preponderant in the Basque Country, countering the Spanish-name imposition of the Franco regime requiring people being given only Spanish names at birth.

Spanish names believed that the suffix -[n]e was inherently feminine, and new names like Nekane or Garbine are frequent among Basque females.

Until 1978, Spanish was the single official language of the Spanish civil registries and Basque surnames had to be registered according to the Spanish phonetical rules.

However, in the Basque province of Alava and, to a lesser extent, in Navarre, it was common to add one's birth village to the surname using the Spanish names particle de to denote a toponymic, particularly when the surname was a common one; for instance, someone whose surname was Lopez and whose family was originally from the valley of Ayala could employ Lopez de Ayala as a surname.

Catalan-speaking territories abide by the Spanish naming customs, yet usually the discrete surnames are joined with the word i, instead of the Spanish y, and this practice is very common in formal contexts.

Many Catalan names are shortened to hypocoristic forms using only the final portion of the name, and with a diminutive suffix.

Just like elsewhere, many surSpanish names were generated from jobs or professions, physical characteristics, or origin of the person.

Specially relevant are the Galician surSpanish names originated from medieval patronymics, present in local documentation since the 9th century, and popularized from the 12th century on.

NickSpanish names are usually obtained from the end of a given name, or through derivation.