Category talk:Espinosa de los Monteros (surname)

No such thing?

I’ll better let the Spanish-speaking editors decide on this one (@Strakhov: maybe?), but this seems to be the same situation that has been afflicting Portuguese-language surnames here in Commons for way too long now: "Espinosa de los Monteros" is not one surname, it’s two. Millions of normal people around the world have more than two word-names in their name, and yet assorted incompoops both in Commons and Wikidata keep trying to shoehorn everything and everybody in to the exceptionally narrow English+French two-word ornomastic paradigm of GivenName+Surname, treating as an exception any variance in sorting order and number of elements and ignoring things like partonymics, inflected variants, address style, usual abbreviations, lifelong changes, quasi-pseudonyms, and (actual) compound names of any kind. So in this case, two surnames

• Espinosa
• de los Monteros

the latter being a coumpound of three elements, with "de los" being a complement prefix and obligate sorting and abbreviation being "Monteros".

That’s no productive use to categorize anyone under "Category:Espinosa de los Monteros" just because they happen to have this fortuitous surname combo. If there’s any use in categorizing a family as such, then create Category:Espinosa de los Monteros (family) but no not populate it automaticly from their members’ names, as there might be expections on both sides.

This is of course just one among many such categories, created via Wikidata’s terrible take on onomastics. They have been fussing about it for a while, but even the basics are yet to be sorted out. And we cannot keep things straight on Commons’ side if we keep getting spammed with constant recreation of bogus categories due to some bots’ inneffable lifegoal of mirroring each and every knol ever excreted by Wikidata.

-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 16:02, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

@Tuválkin: I do not have a degree on Onomastics but IMHO, Espinosa de los Monteros is usually a "surname" in its own, at least in "Hispanic" tradition (compound surnames are a thing there). For example, "Iván Espinosa de los Monteros y de Simón" (this guy) is named that way because he was fathered by "Carlos Espinosa de los Monteros y Bernaldo de Quirós" (double combo there) and "María Eugenia de Simón y Vallarino". Compound surnames are more frequent in "nobility" (although, sometimes, with those families wikieditors include third and fourth surnames gratuitously as part of these people's names, but that's not the case here IMHO). Compound surnames usually use an hyphen joining two surnames or words as the preposition "de" and articles (los, la,...). Reason why these surnames originate in the first place?: I don't know exactly, but I think they exist... Cheers. Strakhov (talk) 16:17, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

@Tuválkin. PD: when a particle such as "de tal Apellido" is not part of the first surname, but the second surname itself, I think the conjunction "y" was often used (at least in the past) to separate both: Licino de la Fuente y de la Fuente or Òscar Escuder i de la Torre (this second one is Catalan, though). Anyway, using "y" to separate first and second surname is a pretty old-fashioned custom, and today I guess only nobility and "wannabe nobility" people use that in "Spanish Spanish". On the contrary, in Catalan language, it has become more frequent using "i" between first and second surname, whether they are compound or not. With regard to using "de..." preceding a surname -> surnames like that are probably more usual between common guys ("de la Fuente", "de la Torre", "de los Ríos"...) than complex surnames such as "Espinosa de los Monteros" or "Bernaldo de Quirós" (!). Anyway, it may be mentioned this: I think I read somewhere this woman (who was really "firstsurnamed" Cospedal) began to use "de Cospedal" to sound more aristocratic or something like that, so "de" may still have a noble bit. Strakhov (talk) 17:07, 25 April 2021 (UTC)