“What are your surnames?”
Or why “what is your mother’s maiden name?” is not a password-recovery question in Spain
When filling up forms here, I often have to explain why I only have one surname. And also which of my names is my first name. The topic of surnames was fascinating when I first got to know Spaniards personally, but was more pertinent when I had to register my child’s name in both countries.
Spanish surnames
In most of the world, people get their father’s surname (patriname) or name as their own surname. In Spain and most other hispanic countries, the default is to get both partiname and matriname as a double-barrelled surname.
Forms here usually ask for both your surnames, then your parent’s first names, with typical interpretation that your first surname belongs to your father, and the second, your mother.
For example, Picasso the artist took his mother’s surname as his working artist name - his father’s surname was Ruiz. (His full name at birth was in fact, Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso)
This order of naming (First Name Partiname Matriname) also meant that in passing on surnames from parent to child, the grandmother’s surname would be dropped. This practice was the default until 1999, when the law allowed the order of surnames to be changed to place the mother’s surname as the first. Siblings must have surnames in the same order.
The great thing about it is that couples can choose which surname their child passes down (e.g. Picasso), especially if one surname is more common than the other.
Singaporean surnames
Before registering my son’s name, the prevailing Registration of Births and Deaths Act (1985) stipulated that “any surname of a child to be entered in respect of the registration of the birth of the child shall be that of the father of the child”. This posed an issue for registering double-barrelled surnames because it only allowed the father’s surname to be recognised as the child’s surname. There were exceptions for children of unwed mothers, but that was about it.
It seemed that this has been removed in the latest Registration of Births and Deaths Act 2021. Surnames are not mentioned; but only that names “(a) must be in a form expressed in characters in the modern English alphabet;(b) may include a permitted character; and(c) must not exceed the number of characters permitted in the electronic form of the register for the entry of a name.”
In Singapore, it isn’t the case that everyone has a surname. Often times in Malay and Indian names, it is the father’s first name that is passed on to the child.
I wonder what this new act means for naming of children in Singapore now, can you give your kid a superhero’s name, like “Clark Kent”, even if your surname is just “Tan”?