**For spaniards names.** A spaniard has a given name that sometimes is two (even more) like *Pedro*, *Pablo*, *Juan Luis*, *María Eugenia*, etc. The second given name is recognized because it is usually different from the usual given names. It is possible to have a family names like *Carlos*, but it is not quite frequent. Additionally all the people has two family names, the first comes from the father's family and the second from mother's the family. Roughly this second family name works as the "middle initial" in some English speaking countries. So, a mathematician named José Luis García Pérez should be cited like García Pérez, José L. In real life you might call him José, José Luis, or perhaps Pepe. A really brief way and of course correct of referring to him is García, J. L. He might be tired of explains this subtleties to editors and authors and write his name as José Luis García-Pérez, avoiding references to him as prof. Pérez instead of the right prof. García. But this solution is not really compatible with the legal use stablished in Spain. It happens that some people have complicated family names like Francisco Javier de la Vega Martínez, then the citation should be Vega Martínez, Francisco J. de la and the short version Vega, F. de la Another source of possible confusion is people with composite last names like, say Pedro Antonio García-Valcárcel Rodríguez. Then the composite works a single last name and most of the time its is not abbreviated. Perhaps in a desperate situation the first of the two because it usually is the more common. A citation should read García-Valcárcel Rodríguez, Pedro A. and the (extra) short version G.-Valcárcel, P. I think I am covering the several cases. Now for the extremely complicated example in the question: Juan Pablo Fernández de Calderón García-Iglesias. The name "Juan" is the first given name, thus the main one, "Pablo" is the second given name, "Fernández de Calderón" is the first last name, so the main one and "García-Iglesias" is a composite second last name. The right way of citation: Fernández de Calderón García-Iglesias, Juan P. a short version Fernández de Calderón, J. And if you are really out of space the following Fdez. de Calderón, J. would be possible. There are other variants but I think I've covered the key points.