Peruvians can now decide to take their mother's name before their father's.
Peruvians will now be able to decide whether they want to take their mother's name before the paternal family name and thus register it with Reniec, thanks to a new ruling by the Constitutional Court (TC).
Article 20 of the Civil Code states that "the child has the first surname of the father and the first of the mother".
Según la interpretación de la Reniec, este artículo establecía que, al inscribir a una persona en el registro nacional, siempre debe ir primero el apellido paterno.
In this sense, they required Peruvians to use their paternal surname followed by their mother's, or else to rectify this fact.
El TC emitió una nueva sentencia en la cual señalaron que interpretar el artículo 20 del Código Civil como lo estaba haciendo la Reniec es inconstitucional.
Interpretation of TC
"establishing the priority of the paternal surname over the maternal family name in the allocation of the name violates the principle-right of equality on the basis of sex," the judges of the Supreme Court pointed out in this regard.
They also point out that this interpretation "enhances the stereotyping that women have had in the family environment".
La interpretación del TC ahora deberá ser utilizada por la Reniec, por lo que, desde ahora en adelante, toda persona podrá elegir el orden de apellidos que desee.
With this ruling, Peru joins other countries such as Spain, Portugal and Argentina, where parents and the same person are allowed to choose the order of their surnames, in order to protect their right to identity and equality of the sexes.
Specific case
In the specific case analyzed by the CT, a young woman had used her mother's surnames all her life, since she had not been recognized by her father.
However, her father later recognized her, at which point she incorporated her father's last name as her second surname.
Al llegar a la mayoría de edad y realizar los trámites ante Reniec para obtener su DNI, la Reniec le solicitó modifique el orden de sus apellidos.
However, the young woman and her mother indicated that she had always used her mother's name as the first and that changing the order of her surnames would affect the identity with which she had developed her whole life.
