Date:  Mon, 4 Aug 1997 20:23:01 -0400
From:  "William H. Smith" <wh5mith[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ATL.MINDSPRING.COM>
Subject: Re: (Garcia) Marquez

At 10:42 AM 7/29/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Alan Baragona writes:
>
>>I get annoyed when people refer
>>to Gabriel Garcia
>>Marquez as "Marquez" instead of
>>"Garcia Marquez."
>
>Could somebody please explain the protocol here?
>
>As I recall, when I lived in Mexico, people explained to me that "Garcia" was
>the matronymic and "Marquez" the patronymic--and the matronymic was
>frequently dropped in all but the most formal of situations. Is my memory
>wrong? Or are there different practices in different parts of the
>Spanish-speaking world? It seems to me that people frequently referred to ech
>other by their "last" names rather than their full family names.
>
In Cuba, at least for my ex-wife's family, the pattern is this: patronymic,
mother's patronymic, father's
mother's patronymic, mother's mother's patronymic. Thus, Fidel Castaro Ruiz
is the son of a Catro father and a Ruiz mother. Ruiz is often dropped.
Bill Smith