Why Hispanic surnames from Spain and Latin America matter in the US

Body

For many people from Spain and Latin America, a surname can function as a record of family relationships—often listing one surname from a parent and another from the other parent. In the United States, where many government systems and forms are built around a single last name, that naming tradition can create mismatches that follow people through everyday paperwork.

In countries that use two surnames, the first is typically drawn from a father and the second from a mother, according to the AP explainer. The article lays out a common pattern: if someone’s father is Daniel Flores Garcia and their mother is Ana Salinas Marquez, that person’s surnames would be Flores Salinas. It also notes that laws and traditions can vary, including how women handle surnames after marriage and how older naming practices sometimes use “de,” meaning “of,” as part of the name.

The AP explainer also describes how, in the United States, people with typical Hispanic surnames sometimes default to using only the paternal surname to conform with the norm of a single last name. It adds that some people unfamiliar with these conventions may mistake the father’s name as a middle name rather than as the person’s surname, which can lead families to adopt different approaches such as keeping both surnames, hyphenating them, or combining them into one word.

The story connects the naming tradition to popular culture through Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, who is set to perform in the halftime show at this weekend’s Super Bowl. Bad Bunny’s given name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, which AP says follows the two-surname approach: Martínez from his father, Tito Martínez, and Ocasio from his mother, Lysaurie Ocasio.

The AP explainer then shifts from general rules to how paperwork can break down for individuals. It describes Susana Pimiento, an Austin, Texas translation and interpreter services business owner originally from Colombia, who said she uses her full name for official government business but experiences complications when systems require different formats for surnames.

Pimiento’s full name is Susana Pimiento Chamorro, but the article says she uses it for official transactions and also that she has had to adjust how she presents her surnames to keep documents consistent. When she went to get a driver’s license for the first time in Texas, AP reports that she said the state allowed her to keep two surnames only if she hyphenated them—rather than dropping her mother’s last name because it would not match her passport.

The article adds that airlines can also impose their own limits. Pimiento said she has to run her surnames together as if they were one word when booking travel. When she received a green card, AP reports that the government issued it with a name format that did not match her other documentation, including using her husband’s name in a way she described as “not even in the American way, but in the old Latin American way.”

Pimiento told AP that she had to return the green card because it did not match her other records, and that it took about a year before the government issued a new one with her actual name. The explainer also says she sought special permission to leave the U.S. so she could travel for work while the process was being corrected.

Pimiento said she had already told her husband before they married that she would not take his name. She told AP: “Before I got married, I told my husband, ‘I’m not taking your name, you know? There is no way’,” and that later, when her green card came with the name she described as incorrect, her and her husband “laughed” because it “was a joke.” She added, “But, oh my gosh, it was so hard to straighten it out!”