Guille and Edu's excellent adventure

Bill and Ted's cack movie

Once upon a time in Hollywood, Bill and Ted had an excellent adventure in their largely unsuccessful 1989 movie which, truth be told, didn't seem to captivate that many people. This particular blog entry has very little in common with that not particularly good celluloid offering other than my fairly unsubtle reworking of the title to tenuously introduce my subject matter, which, today revolves around Spanish names and their sometimes bewildering derivations. Just to tidy up the first loose end then, Guillermo and Eduardo, in case you didn't know, are the Iberian equivalent's of William and Edward, for which the shorter British versions should be readily apparent, if not, you may well struggle as you read on!

One peculiarity, although to the Spanish it's perfectly normal, is the use of two hyphenated surnames so as to include the family names of both mother and father for official use, bank statemements and letters, for example. Etiquette dictates the order in which the two appear, and, until a 2010 law change, the father was always the first in the string; nowadays the parents of new born infants can decide for themselves the priority and if no agreement is forthcoming the law falls back on that tried and tested method of alphabetical order. This is quite important because, whilst officialdom makes use of the entire, sometimes lengthy, name, in general use, schools perhaps and with friends amongst other informal situations, the combination of four and possibly five names is usually condensed down to two, the first Christian name and Father's surname.  Once in a while the more formal things in life can be slightly problematic; on almost all Spanish credit cards the name often has more characters than the number, this can be great fun when appending a passenger name to a flight booking for example. In her full name my amazing, (Spanish), girlfriend has an exotic combination of five different words, easily sufficient to make the highfalutin English, (double-barrelled), aristocracy green with envy.

In this respect surnames are much easier to analyse than forenames because by their nature surnames, in whatever configuration, are governed by the law and have considerably less room for manoeuvre than others. This is where the fun starts and leads me neatly on to the whole reason for these words, a theme I alluded to in the first paragraph; short versions of popular Spanish names, and, where two occur together, the limitless possibilities to make some sort of hybrid. I'll kick off with a short test, you ready? then we'll begin - where do these names come from?

Chema, Marisa, Ximo, Paco, Kiko, Manu, Lola, Paqui, Conchi, Asun, Chon.

Postman Patrick

I guess the English notions of Tony for Anthony, Andy for Andrew, Mick for Michael, Sue for Susan, Pat for Patricia and Mo for Maureen might well baffle most Spanish folk but at least, perhaps with the exception of Mo, for the examples I chose the short version seems to have more than a passing resemblance to the actual name. In Spain though nothing is really as simple as Pete, and most nicknames or short versions tend to make you think more. I've actually lost count of the times I've been in conversation with one of my native mates and had one of those "ah, I get it" moments where the penny, or should I say, centimo, drops with a resounding clang as this simple Englishman finally figures out the full version of the name of the person with whom I've been friends for ages.

Anyway, back to my little quiz, how did you get on ? Actually, I thought one or two were a little bit evil, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because it emphasises the difficulty I sometimes have. Anyway, here are the rather cunning answers.

Chema/Jose Maria (that's male believe it or not),  Marisa/Maria Luisa,  Ximo/Joaquin,  Paco/Francisco,  

Kiko/Franciso (again),  Manu/Manuel,  Lola/Dolores,  Paqui/Francisca (the female version),
 
Conchi/Concepcion,  Asun/Asuncion,  Chon/Asuncion

I haven't got the foggiest idea where Chema and Ximo come from so please don't ask!