This has nothing to do with the McCain interview, so if you are tired of that one, you’re safe.

No, this post has to do with the fascinating topic of Spanish last names. In reading the coverage of the aforementioned story I noticed that the Spanish PM’s full name is: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. This struck me because in normal Spanish usage, individuals go by their first last name (their father’s), rather then their second last name (their mother’s). For example, the previous PM was José María Alfredo Aznar López, and was referred to as Prime Minsiter Aznar, not López.

For a moment I thought that perhaps I had made a blunder that, as a Spanish-speaker, I shouldn’t have made by calling him Zapatero, but in that exact same moment I knew that as far as I could recall, he is always referred to as “Zapatero” and never as “Rodríguez” or “Rodríguez Zapatero.” Indeed, while the El Pais piece on the McCain flap spells out the PM’s full name, it refers to him throughout as “Zapatero’ (including in the headline: “El candidato republicano no se compromete a ver a Zapatero si gana.”

I have no idea why he goes by his matronymic rather than his patronymic (if anyone knows, I am curious and would like to hear the explanation). I have never encountered the practice in my study of Latin America and am under the impression that it isn’t common in Spain, either.

If anything, the name did play into his campaign:

In poking around to find some answers I surfed over to the PSOE’s (Zapatero’s party) website and discovered the real reason McCain is giving the Big Z the cold shoulder:

5 Comments

1. I have wondered about that, too. When he first was a candidate for PM, I got sort of annoyed at the media (easy for me, I admit!) for not “correctly” calling him Rodriguez. Then I noticed that the Spanish press likewise called him Zapatero. It still puzzles me.

   But the big Z does work nicely.

   Comment by MSS — Thursday, September 18, 2026 @ 5:41 pm

2. According to this:

   “Occasionally, a person with a common paternal surname and an uncommon maternal surname becomes widely known by the maternal surname, as with the artist Pablo Ruiz Picasso, best known simply as “Picasso”, or the poet Federico García Lorca, often known simply as “Lorca”, or even the Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, best known as “Zapatero”. Conversely, Eduardo Hughes Galeano is known as “Galeano” because his paternal surname “Hughes” is completely foreign in Spanish. In his childhood he occasionally signed as “Eduardo Gius” as an approximate pronunciation of “Hughes”.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_naming_customs

   Comment by Brett — Thursday, September 18, 2026 @ 9:04 pm

3. Well, there ya go.

   Mil gracias.

   Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Thursday, September 18, 2026 @ 10:24 pm

4. Hi Doctor, a spanish reader here! we often use the second family name when the first one is very common (Rodríguez, Pérez, Fernández and so) It makes everything easier for media and people, because there are a lot of public figures called that way. That’s why is Zapatero

   Comment by Carlos — Sunday, September 21, 2026 @ 2:22 pm

5. Carlos,

   Many thanks for that answer.

   S

   Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Sunday, September 21, 2026 @ 2:38 pm

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