We Spaniards like to have two surnames, and even more to be the only ones with this particularity. In addition to constituting a sign of identity, it seems to us a primitive testimony of respect for women, relegated by the unique surname of other countries (currently, in addition, in Spain you can choose the order of the surnames, with which it is possible to put that of the mother to that of the father).
Since when do we have them? And because? Tracing the origin of this norm, it is discovered that there were several reasons besides –why not– filial love. Among these, the need to establish a liberal state in Spain. Actually, legally it is an obligation that is not more than a century old, although the custom was much earlier.
Nor is it that we owe it to the Romans. Yes, Roman citizens (not slaves or women) had three names, but nothing to do with what we have today. The praenomen would be equivalent to our given name, the nomen identified the gens, a kind of civil groups or groups of families in which the different lineages were distributed, and the cognomen was a simple nickname that referred to some characteristic of the individual in concrete.
Sometimes it could be a physical defect, as in Caecus (blind), or a distinctive habit. Scipio, for example, means “staff”, in a reference to the one who uses it. As cognomina became hereditary over time, more of them had to be added, sometimes resulting in endless surnames. This name-day mess died with the fall of the Empire and the feudalization of Europe. With the dispersion of the population in small villages, it was no longer necessary to add so many nuances to differentiate people.
For the same reason, surnames did not become popular again until the cities were reborn, in the context of what is known as the “revolution of the 12th century”. With a nuance, because before that the nobility had already been using them to distinguish themselves from the rest of the people, in a custom that was soon imitated by the common people.
At that moment, however, one was enough. In the Hispanic kingdoms, the most common were patronymics, formed by a derivation of the father’s name. López, for example, comes from Lope, and Fernández, from Fernando.
Other possibilities were place names, which referred to the place of origin, or those that referred to trades or professions. A famous exception is that of Expósito, which is the surname given to abandoned children, that is, to the “exposed”, the helpless.
Just as today no Foundling comes from an orphanage, throughout the Middle Ages surnames became hereditary, in a spontaneous process that meant that, by the end of the period, all Spaniards had at least one.
And what about the second? Antonio Alfaro de Prado, vice president of the Hispanic Genealogical Association, gathered in an article everything that historians have said about it so far, since it is not a simple case.
Genealogists believe that it appeared in the 16th century among the noble classes. The reasons are not known for sure, but it is most likely that it was, once again, a way of differentiating himself from ordinary people.
And, as had already happened with the paternal surname, the practice of using the maternal surname also ended up being imitated by the rest of the population. From a regulation signed by King Carlos IV in 1796, in which he forced military widows to present their two surnames if they wanted to collect their pension, we can deduce that by the 18th century the duo was already quite widespread.
However, as Alfaro qualifies, the fact that there was the possibility of using both does not mean that it was something formalized. Practically until the end of the 19th century, the order of the surnames was a matter subject to arbitrariness, as some changed it for reasons as banal as differentiating themselves from a local merchant with the same name.
If it was formalized, Alfaro tells us, it was due to the gradual establishment of the liberal state in Spain. Not only because a modern administration needed to identify its citizens efficiently, but because it was one more way to end the differences between the aristocrats and the rest of the population. In a community of citizens, everyone had to have two last names, not just the privileged
It is not strange that it was during the Liberal Triennium (1820-1823), those three years in which the Liberals forced Fernando VII to abide by the principles of the Constitution of Cádiz, when the first serious attempt to institutionalize that was made.
The excuse was the attempt to draft the first Civil Registry (1822), which forced municipalities to keep a register of births and deaths, assigning them a task until then in the hands of the Church. For the first time, such lists should include both the father’s and mother’s surnames.
The project failed, just like the Liberal Triennium, but throughout the century a series of provisions, laws and norms followed – at various levels of the administration – that insisted on this. Thus we come to the Civil Code of 1889 –the first in the history of Spain– and the Royal Order of 1903 on the civil registry of children without known parents.
Although neither of the two regulations required anyone to register with both surnames, their wording is proof that everyone already had them. The Royal Order, for example, gave instructions to the registrars so that, in the event of encountering an orphan, they would give him two surnames so that he would not be different from the others.
