4 ms·

Names are such a culturally different thing, and it's interesting to see how software grows around the culture it's written in and how walking into it from a di

by ajford 5y ago

Names are such a culturally different thing, and it's interesting to see how software grows around the culture it's written in and how walking into it from a different culture can feel. Anglo-centric view here (given that's where I'm from), but just living in Puerto Rico for a while was interesting. The culture there predominately has two surnames, one from each parent. When I was there, I was frequently asked for my mother's maiden name to be used on my paperwork, but I was quite resistant given I had a couple of accounts (banking primarily) that I could not change the security questions for and made use of "mother's maiden name" as a "secure answer". I've lost track of the ways that broke peoples software, while I was over there, and started giving my middle name or asking them to double my surname. One place was unable to send me any mail for a while until they figured out that the software would silently skip "incomplete" accounts when generating monthly invoices. One place would inject "null" so I got mail to that was "null-Surname". One place just wouldn't allow them to create my records without a second surname.

everybodyknows 5y ago
>two surnames, one from each parent. Which one, of each parent's two, is passed on to a child?
- skipnup 5y ago
  In Spain usually the father's name.
- ajford 5y ago
  IIRC, the patriarchal surname (i.e. mother's father's name and father's father's name) is carried on. I believe it's also tradition that a spouse doesn't change their name but adopts a qualifier, so they keep their paternal surname and append 'de SPOUSE_SURNAME' to signify marriage in general conversation, though they are still formally 'X Y de Z'. But I'm only an outsider on this, so I could be totally wrong here or missing some semantics or subtleties. I love learning about other cultures but there's so much to them that's hard to grasp without living within the culture for a long time.

by ajford 5y ago

everybodyknows 5y ago

>two surnames, one from each parent. Which one, of each parent's two, is passed on to a child?

skipnup 5y ago
In Spain usually the father's name.
ajford 5y ago
IIRC, the patriarchal surname (i.e. mother's father's name and father's father's name) is carried on. I believe it's also tradition that a spouse doesn't change their name but adopts a qualifier, so they keep their paternal surname and append 'de SPOUSE_SURNAME' to signify marriage in general conversation, though they are still formally 'X Y de Z'. But I'm only an outsider on this, so I could be totally wrong here or missing some semantics or subtleties. I love learning about other cultures but there's so much to them that's hard to grasp without living within the culture for a long time.