Why do Spanish women not change their surnames when they get married?

Shorouk Express

Spain is one of the few countries in the world in which women don’t change their surname when they get married.

Although in other cultures and countries it’s the done thing for women to take their husband’s surname, in Spain this has never been a legal obligation or custom. In fact, to many Spanish women the idea seems strange. To others, it’s downright offensive.

Many assume that this is due to a strong sense of feminist zeal present in Spanish society (which in some ways it is and certainly exists) but the reality is that it’s complicated and the tradition is arguably not as progressive as it seems.

READ ALSO: Why do people in Spain have two surnames?

This can cause concern among mixed nationality couples wanting to live in or move to Spain. Could you change your surname if you wanted to? Would it be recognised by Spanish law?

Looking at the Spanish Foreign Ministry advice on exactly this, the rules seem pretty clear: “The change of surnames due to marriage is not provided for in Spanish legislation. At the time of registration of a marriage, the surnames will be those that appear on the birth certificates of the contracting parties, and in the same order.”

Article 53 of Spain’s Civil Registry Law outlines the only instances in which changed surnames are acceptable (change of order, adding prepositions, spelling corrections, and so on) and marriage is not on the list.

So, that’s one simple answer. Simply put, Spanish women don’t change their surnames when they get married because that process isn’t even really recognised by Spanish law.

So where does it come from?

Spanish surnames

It’s not just about marriage, of course. Names in Spain more generally are different than you might be used to. As you’ve probably noticed, most people in Spain (and many from Latin America too) have two surnames. Whereas in the UK or US we usually only have one surname, we might have a middle name to make up for it.

In Spain, however, middle names are rare and two surnames the norm.

Newborn babies here almost always take on both the surnames of their mother and father, and then keep them for the rest of their lives — regardless of whether they get married.

So why do Spanish women not change their surnames when they get married?

There’s no one answer to this question. There’s the fact the name changes aren’t recognised by Spanish law, of course, but to properly understand it we must consider a couple of other possible explanations.

These include bureaucratic reasons as well as feminist sentiment, but also some consideration of whether or not the rule changes of recent years (and naming traditions in general) are as progressive as they seem.

Admin and bureaucratic considerations

One possible explanation could boil down to bureaucracy. Some historians suggest it could come from administrative concerns and wanting to avoid unnecessary name changes (and thus paperwork) in the future.

During the nineteenth-century Spain saw the standardisation of names so that population records, which until then had only existed in parish records, could pass from the church to the state. In 1822 the first civil register was set up in Madrid, and by 1840 this had been done in all the major provincial capitals. From 1871 it expanded to the whole population and in 1889 the Spanish Civil Code established the use of both the father’s and mother’s surnames for children, as it still is today.

So, unlike in other countries, in Spain you have two surnames from birth and that doesn’t change, whatever happens, saving you administrative bother down the line when you marry (or divorce).

It’s pretty much always been like this in Spain, too. There has never been a legal requirement or cultural trend for women to take their husband’s name upon marrying. The only credible examples of this, or something close to it, at least, were in old Spanish nobility circles when some women may have added de to their pre-existing two surnames, but this is rare.

Feminist naming trends?

Others argue that the Spanish norm of not taking on the husband’s name is an example of deep feminist ideology in Spain.

This isn’t entirely true.

Of course, for many españolas, giving up their name and taking on the husband’s would be seen as akin to becoming property of their husband, something they’d never do anyway.

But it’s often believed that the custom comes from this, rather than it being a byproduct of it. It’s true that Spanish surname traditions are more progressive and challenge the patriarchal rules of other countries, but in reality even the Spanish tradition of taking from the mother and father is in itself based on male-inheritance.

When a baby is born, it will take both its mother and father’s surname. However, as it’s very likely their parents are Spanish and therefore also have two surnames, the question arises as to which of their names the newborn should take.

Although Spanish babies do take a surname from their mother, it’s almost always the ‘male’ surname – that is, the name of their father, so the newborn’s maternal grandfather – from both. That is to say, the surnames that are passed down are, albeit from both Mum and Dad, both from the male part of the name and side of the family.

This patrilineal naming tradition was even Spanish law until 2000, and many still continue the tradition to this day. When children reach eighteen they can legally rearrange their names if they wish to but according to El Diario a whopping 99.53 percent of newborns still follow convention and take their father’s name first.

This could be because it was only allowed if both parents agreed, and in the event of a dispute the father’s name was automatically put first.

Following further reforms in 2017, babies born in Spain are now not automatically given their father’s surname first, in a move that was considered a victory for equal rights campaigners at the time.

However, even if Spanish women don’t take their husband’s name when they marry, they are still passing on their father’s name to their children eventually.

READ ALSO: Spain overhauls tradition of ‘sexist’ double-barrelled surnames

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