Picasso and names
Why do Spanish people have such long names? For example Pablo Picasso, his name consists of around 24 'names'. Pablo and Picasso are his first and last name.
3 Answers
The Spanish have a long tradition of honoring both the family and their religion. Including names of relatives and Saints in the names of their children is a way of expressing this. This is much easier to understand than why Zappa named his daughter "Moon Unit".
Well, There's Charles Philip Arthur George in the UK. Was his mother afraid he'd be confused with Charles Philip Alexander George when he went to kindergarten? Then there's George Herbert Walker Bush, an ex-president of the US. And speaking of Moon Unit, why have so many parents in the US named their daughters after a jewelry store? Tiffany's is very upscale, of course. It's the place for precious metals and precious stones; Gold, platinum, silver, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, etc. But still, a store? And I really want to know why my neighbor's granddaughter has been named, not Tiffany, but Monet, a brand of costume jewelry, the fake stuff. Mysteries, mysteries.
Hello Extreme, welcome to the Forum. I changed the category of your question to General Discussions.
I don't think that you can safely generalize from Picasso's name to "the Spanish people". Most people I know have at most two names, maybe even three - but it is not common at all to see anyone with more than three names.
Using two names is common enough in Anglic cultures too: John Fitzgeral, Joanne Kathleen Rowling, John Paul....
To a certain point it is still a custom for people from the higher classes and the nobility (in Spain and elsewhere) to give their children very long names. Go ahead and do a bit of research on the names of the member of the British royalty, for example.
But regular folk don't normally use more than two names.
