A question for any Portuguese or Spanish speakers here, which I think are languages and cultures in which these sorts of name patterns are common - when you see a name like "Roberto Antonio Ferreira De Almeida", is it obvious where the "given" name stops, and the "family name" starts?<p>I'm guessing in this case it's fairly obvious, since I'm guessing Ferreira is analogous to something like Smith, but are there names where it's not obvious?<p>And are things like middle names even a thing there? Or is it all "given name consisting of several words"?
Brazilian here. Around these parts, middle names are not a thing. They don’t show up in forms, and also aren’t expected to exist.<p>When the names before the family names are multiple, we call them “nomes compostos” (composed/combined names). There are very common combinations, such as “Carlos Eduardo” and “Maria Clara”.<p>If someone named “Maria Clara Guimarães Schindhelm” fills out a form, they’ll say their given name is “Maria Clara”, with the rest being the surname.<p>Knowing where the given name ends is an exercise in pattern recognition. We have a sense of what’s a given name, and a sense of what’s a surname. It’s an imperfect system, though: some families have surnames that are also used as first/given names (a common one is “Francisco”).
Yes. Having 4 names are quite common in Portugal, specially in certain areas. The names are usually structured like this: G1 G2 FM FF<p>G1 and G2 are given names. Usually 2 "first names" that you see in english, but there's common combos and sometimes there's a word joining them. Examples: "Maria Jesus" vs "Maria de Jesus". Some names are more common to be put first, but almost every name can be put in any order, example: "José António" vs "António José".<p>FM and FF are easy. FF is the family name of your father (your father's FF), and FM is the family name from your mother (your mother's FF).<p>Where I was raised 99% of my friends had 4 names structured like this, I only knew a few that didn't. When I moved to Lisbon the 3 name structure was much more common, dropping the second given name.<p>In Portugal there's rules for naming your kids (at least there were when I lived there), but I think in Brazil such rules don't exist. The author is brazillian but his name seems to follow the traditional portuguese naming style, as you guessed his name in english could be translated to "Robert Anthony Smith of Almeida" (Almeida is a portuguese town).
Not ambiguous really. You know it's <first> (<second/middle>) (<third (rare)>)? (<dad's surname>) (<mom's surname>) and names are typically a single WORD, but may (rarely) have a prefix like De/Della (except for the first name).<p>---<p>Well, this guys mentions they treat "Roberto Antonio" as a single name, and not as a first and second/middle name. I don't see it that way (Spanish, Chile). Here there's a lot of way too common first names (María, José), so most go by both or just he second one, but legally they just have a common first name (and thus, many systems use both names to avoid confusion over mail and email).
In my experience, every compound given name is made of very traditional names (with some specific combos like Roberto Antonio and Maria Eduarda being especially popular), so it has always been clear where the given name stops.<p>Though I wouldn't completely rule out a name being ambiguous, either because the family name is strangely casual, or because the parents made a bold choice.