Interestingly enough, having multiple names for different situations was commonplace before bureaucracy wanted standardized personal and surnames for better record keeping and taxation. Names used to be a lot more flexible and contextual before statecraft.
My grandmother has a double-barrelled surname (Forename name1-name2), and it seems to be entirely random whether she gets name1-name2, name1name2, name1 name2, just name2, or on a few occasions name1/name2 from various companies.
> One of my coworkers was from Spain and had a last name consisting of two words separated by a space.
It's two last names, father and mother first last names. I guess the same definition works, but it's worth noting that any last name might contain a space.
And the inverse is also somewhat common- forms which require both a maternal and paternal surname, and won’t let you continue with just a single surname.
You are totally right! But it would make the logic way more complex than it is right now. I have as "tussenvoegsel" already two words, but how to handle also last names containing two words as well.
Most of the time a distinct between first and last name is already enough for presentational purposes.
Could you put the surname with uppercase letters? That's a convention used in France that I think we should all use.
In Spain, where we have two surnames (first one from father and first one from mother in either order), that would make easier for foreigners to understand that our surname is not the last word. e.g. José Luis GARCÍA LÓPEZ means García López is his surname, while José Luis is a composed name (like JFK where John Fitzgerald were his two names).
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