Spanish views from a small town

When a postman first starts out delivering mail in the villages, they might not know exactly where everybody lives. They have a small map of each village, with the house numbers. They have to match the mail to each of those numbers. Sometimes, a letter might be mis-addressed, and the postman is told that So-and-so López Sánchez doesn't live here, though the number corresponds. Then, they have to go asking around on their deliveries if anyone knows where that person lives. If they happen to come upon a close relative of that person, they're in luck. Otherwise, almost no one will recognize the name. Because that person is known as So-and-so, the Bird. I don't know the surnames of most of the neighbors. I do know the family knicknames; most of them, at least. My disadvantage is that I didn't grow up here, so some knicknames and faces escape me, and the surnames might belong to an Asturian village for all I know them. But everyone has a knick, either something they inheri...

If your name is Mary Jean Smith and you come to Spain on vacation, when you sign in to your hotel or pension, the receptionist will probably say, "Welcome, Ms Jean." He didn't make a mistake reading your name. It's just that his name is possibly Antonio Martín García, and he is Mr. Martín. Everyone in Spain has two surnames and is called by the first surname, which happens to be handed down from the father, and therefore the most important one. So, automatically, when people see three names together, they assume the last two are the surnames. This tradition goes back to the beginning of the Registro Civil in 1870 in which all births and deaths are inscribed, when parents were obliged to register their children's birth and give them surnames. That was when the rules were established giving every child his father's surname (patronym) and his mother's surname (matronym). Therefore, for example, if someone named Juan Martínez Soria marries someone named M...