Spanish names are the traditional way of identifying, and the official way of registering a person in Spain. They are composed of a given name (simple or composite) and two surnames (the first surname of each parent). Traditionally, the first surname is the father's first surname, and the second is the mother's first surname. Since 1999, the order of the surnames of the children in a family in Spain is decided when registering the first child, but the traditional order is nearly universally chosen (99.53% of the time). Women generally do not change their name with marriage.

The practice is to use one given name and the first surname generally (e.g. "Penélope Cruz" for Penélope Cruz Sánchez); the complete name is reserved for legal, formal and documentary matters. Both surnames are sometimes systematically used when the first surname is very common (e.g., Federico García Lorca, Pablo Ruiz Picasso or José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) to get a more distinguishable name. In these cases, it is even common to use only the second surname, as in "Lorca", "Picasso" or "Zapatero". This does not affect alphabetization: "Lorca", the Spanish poet, must be alphabetized in an index under "García Lorca", not "Lorca" or "García".

Spanish naming customs were extended to countries under Spanish rule, influencing naming customs of Hispanic America and Philippines to different extent.

Currently in Spain, people bear a single or composite given name (nombre in Spanish) and two surnames (apellidos in Spanish).

A composite given name is composed of two (or more) single names; for example, Juan Pablo is considered not to be a first and a second forename, but a single composite forename.

The two surnames refer to each of the parental families. Traditionally, a person's first surname is the father's first surname (apellido paterno), while their second surname is the mother's first surname (apellido materno). For example, if a man named Eduardo Fernández Garrido marries a woman named María Dolores Martínez Ruiz (note that women do not change their name with marriage) and they have a child named José, there are several legal options, but their child would most usually be known as José Fernández Martínez.

Spanish gender equality law has allowed surname transposition since 1999, subject to the condition that every sibling must bear the same surname order recorded in the Registro Civil (civil registry), but there have been legal exceptions. Since 2013, if the parents of a child were unable to agree on the order of surnames, an official would decide which is to come first, with the paternal name being the default option. The only requirement is that every son and daughter must have the same order of the surnames, so they cannot change it separately. Since June 2017, adopting the paternal name first is no longer the standard method, and parents are required to sign an agreement wherein the name order is expressed explicitly. The law also grants a person the option, upon reaching adulthood, of reversing the order of their surnames. However, this legislation only applies to Spanish citizens; people of other nationalities are issued the surname indicated by the laws of their original country.

Each of these two surnames can also be composite in itself, with the parts usually linked by: