Hello everybody, I´m Mª Elena Moreno from Spain. Mª is the abbreviation of María, is not a short for María, it´s just for written Spanish.
In Spain, is quite common to have two first name, specially for womens, and the first one usually is María, named after the Virgin María. And of course all of us have two surnames, the first one from the father and the second from the mother.
I think the most common names for men are Jose and Jesús, and María, Pilar and Carmen for women.
My surname means dark-haired, dark-skinned or tanned, althoug I´m fair-skinned.
When you meet someone in Spain for the first time, in a formal situation we use to use the surname with a title like Señor o Señora (Mr. Or Mrs.), but nowadays young people only use the first name.