Nonfiction from NER 41.3 (2020)
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When I was in seventh grade in Chicago, a girl in my class who had moved to the US from Spain, Paloma Larramendi, stood up one day and gave her full name. Maybe we all had to do it—I don’t really remember. I just remember her doing it.
What she recited was:
“My name is Paloma María Eugenia Gabriela González de Fernández de Mutis de Larramendi.”
In my memory I hear these names rolling out with rolled Rs and rounded vowels for something like several minutes. I’m sure it did not take Paloma nearly that long to say her name, but as an American kid I was used to people having just a first, middle, and last name, and that was all. I had never heard of anything more than three names, except in very rare cases when someone had a second middle name because of a dead grandparent.