Double surname and maternal surname: how many chose them?

The son of Silvia Salis, former athlete and vice-president of CONI, and director Fausto Brizzi will be called Eugenio Salis. The surname, by choice, is the maternal one, a possibility that has existed for just over a year in Italy together with that of double surname. “The possibility that, in the presence of paternal recognition, the mother’s surname is used is an epochal cultural change and has gone incredibly unnoticed” wrote Silvia Salis on social media.

The choice of this couple is to «give a signal, and with a male newborn. We felt it was the time to do it because we live in a country where every day the news tells us of men who continue to believe women and children are their “property” and dispose of them as they please. A male who understands from an early age that absolute equality exists in his family will not become one of the men mentioned above».

How many have made this choice in Italy? Not very many, but, in almost a year and a half, there have been those who have chosen to give the double surname or the maternal surname instead of the father’s, automatically attributed by Italian law until the ruling of the Constitutional Court of June 2022.

TO Milan, out of 9886 children born in 2022, 1616 have both paternal and maternal surnames. If you only look at the period following the sentence almost 16% of children have a double surnamethey are 1066, 11% of newborns have only their mother’s surname. In the first six months of 2023, the percentage of the double surname remained unchanged, while that of the single maternal surname increased by one percentage point. TO Rome 14.24% of parents chose a double surname between June and December 2022. However, very few cases in which only the maternal surname was used.

These are the data for the two largest Italian cities, which would be within the national average even if there is no general data for now. A few months after the sentence, the newspaper The print published data relating to some municipalities, mostly in the North, where the percentage went from 5 to 18 percent of newborns with a double surname. These seem like low percentages, but the analysis of Lavoce.info he says that this is not the case and adds an investigation into the intentions of the Italian population iin which approximately half of the sample would have given the double surname. Women are slightly more in favor of a double surname, men would still prefer the first surname to be their own. The same survey says that those who are on the left and those who are not practicing Catholics are more likely to choose a double surname.