Mexico breaks tradition, registers first baby with maternal last names

Public registry officials in northern Mexico say they have registered the country's first baby named with the maternal surnames of both parents.

The tradition in Latin America is to give babies two last names the father's surname, followed by the mother's paternal surname.

So the baby Barbara born to Jose Gonzalez de Diego and Alicia Vera Zboralska would normally have been named Barbara Gonzalez Vera, losing the parents' maternal surnames.

But to honor the maternal line, the couple won a court injunction allowing them to name their child Barbara de Diego Zboralska.

The director of public registries in the northern state of Nuevo Leon says it was a first. Raul Guajardo said yesterday that "this kind of registry doesn't occur anywhere else in the world.