Last names

Nearly all Mexicans keep both their mom’s and their dad’s surnames and drops the parents' maternal names. If Guadalupe Reyes Santiago and Jorge Perez Martin have a kid, he might be called Juan Perez Reyes. The kid takes the first last name of the father and the first last name of the mother, in that order. Nowadays, many people prefer to unofficially use just their paternal surname – Juan Perez.

For a North American living in Mexico, this causes all sorts of problems. I, like most Americans, have only one surname, but opening a bank account in December they –required- a maternal surname. The only place that name appears on any document of mine is my birth certificate, next to my mom’s name in parenthesis. And the other day I had to get a CURV, (like a social security number), but they didn’t include my maternal surname in the lettering…which won’t coincide with my RFC, another bureaucratic number. Let’s hope this doesn’t cause any problems and another 2.5 hour wait at the CURV office downtown.