Week One of Love in the Time of Cholera

Welcome to Thursday! Today starts week two of our group read of Love in the Time of Cholera.  Folks should be somewhere near page 100.

I am, of course, running behind as usual.  I'm at page 38.

My first problem was the appearance of the person in the car with dessert (hopefully that's abstract enough not to be a reveal for those behind me) whose name caused me quite a lot of confusion.  I had to flip back to the beginning of the book, and reread a few pages, to clear up my own confusion.

Here's something I know now, that I did not know before:  In Spanish, one does not have a "last name", rather one has an "apellido", or surname, comprised of a first apellido and a second apellido.  The first apellido is taken from the first apellido of the father, the second apellido is taken from the first apellido of the mother.

According to Wikipedia, Gabriel's parents were Gabriel Eligio García and Luisa Santiaga Márquez.  Huh? shouldn't his name then have been Gabriel Eligio Santiaga?  

Well, his mothers full name was Luisa Santiaga Márquez Iguarán.  In practice, only the first apellido is  used for most purposes, the full apellido is used for legal proceedings and the like, so her name would be bandied about as Luisa Santiaga Márquez, omitting the Iguarán, just as it reads on Wikipedia.  His father's name is similarly said as Gabriel Eligio García, omitting his second apellido.

When Gabriel married Mercedes Barcha Pardo in 1958, I assume she took his paternal apellido (Mercedes Barcha Garcia, that would be, replacing her Mother's first apellido of Pardo, with Gabriel's paternal apellido).  She is named around the intarwebs as Mercedes Barcha, consistent with using only the first apellido in normal use, and she is also named as Mercedes Barcha Garcia, and, oddly, Mercedes Barcha Garcia Marquez, which may be the anglicizing thing popping up again, taking "Garcia Marques" to be his "last name" and replacing the Pardo with it, as though Pardo were her last name.

Anyway, that is why Gabriel Garcia Marquez is found in the G's at Half Price Books, not in the M's as our english and german naming conventions would suggest.  Interestingly, in Spain, the parents of a child may now legally reverse the mother and father first apellidos for their children if they wish, thanks to new gender equality laws.

There are all kinds of cool implications about identity management, sort orders, mailing lists, and such, for correctly handling Spanish surnames.  My bet is most U.S. organizations get it wrong, particularly when accent marks and that pesky space between the first and second apellido needs to be stored.