Workforce Language Services

Cheskin Consulting recently posted in their blog about the Hispanic naming system.  Typically, Hispanics born in Latin America are given four names: a first, a middle, and two surnames, one from the maternal line and the other from the paternal.  But since, in the U.S., we’ve got a different naming system, many Latino immigrants lose parts of their names.  And blog author, Maria Parra, finds that in losing their second name, they lose a bit of their culture and identity.

So what? Well, when Hispanics move to the US, their middle name automatically becomes just an initial, it disappears from documents, and from their life. It was my situation when I first moved to the U.S., I would introduce myself as “Maria Lucia” and people would spontaneously answer “hi Maria” and “Lucia” disappeared from all my documents; suddenly I became “Maria L.” That never happened to me before coming to this country and at the beginning it sounded weird.

While I understand the author’s lament at losing part of her name, I’ve found that the loss of one of the surnames can be more critical and confusing.  In fact, because in the States, non-Hispanics usually use the last surname, that of the maternal line, people are often misidentified. 

When working with Latinos, it’s important to keep in mind that many have both surnames on their official documents (sans hyphen) and often don’t recognize the use of only their maternal surname.

To read the entire blog post, click here.