My name is Esther Vidal Tusell. I am from Barcelona as my fathers. My first surname is quite common here in Cataluña, also in the rest of Spain, but my second surname is very catalan. There are only 669 in all Spain and most of them live here in Barcelona. Is that kind of surname that quite often is miswritten, specially out of Cataluña.
Surnames indicates the family to which we belong. Each culture has it’s own rules how these names are used. In most of spanish speaking countries each person has two surnames, one of his father and another from his mother, like here in Spain. In other countries women when they get married looses their surname. In Russia happens that if for instance “Ivan Petrovich Paulov had a son he would have the same surnames but, if he had a daughter it would be “Irina Petrovna Paulova.
An interesting fact is that here in Spain since 1999 you can choose the order of your surnames. Also Spanish legislation alouds the union of boths surnames as a result of a compound surname. This mainly happens when the second name (mother’s) is very “rare” and they don’t wish to loose it.