[Mrs. Don-o]

"Is there a cliff note version without the ridiculously long names and titles?"

San Cristobal de las Casas is the name of a city in Mexico. It's also the name of the Diocese. No worse than Minneapolis-St. Paul Minnesota, I should think.

As for the Spanish surnames: they customarily use both father's and mother's family name. Ridiculous?

[kerryusama04]

Cuando usted escriba a ellos que hablan ingles, si', es ridiculoso. Mucha gente llama Minneapolis-Saint Paul solamente Minneapolis. Nobody calls Martin Luther King "Doctor Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.", do they?

It's kinda like when the news people read one word in Spanish and over-pronounce it with a Spanish accent.

[livius]

No, it's not ridiculous - and the Spanish don't understand why, in the US, women usually take their husband's names. I tell them it's just a cultural naming convention, like their conventions.

In Spain and Spanish cultures, the name of the father comes first, and then the mother's family name (the name of her father) comes afterwards to distinguish one "García" (the most common name in Spain) from another. The second last name is often abbreviated: Antonio García F., for Antonio García Fernández, for example.