Cambios

Barandiaran provided reflections on the data that he collected in the San Gregorio neighbourhood of the charter town of Ataun (G), generally applicable to the Basque rural world at the start of the 20^th 20th century. He noted that there was a double family or marital association, in other words, the parents and heir with his/her spouse and children in nearly all the homes of the rural world. They were an economic unit, a social community and a religious entity. All the members of the family ate, prayed and worked together<ref>José Miguel de BARANDIARAN. “Aspectos de la transición contemporánea en la cultura del pueblo vasco” in ''Etnología y tradiciones populares''. Zaragoza: 1974, p. 12.</ref>.

In the part of the Basque Country falling within Spain, it is common for married women to keep her surname which she passed on to her children as a second surname. In the part falling within France, married women do not keep their maiden name, but take their husband’s. As Barandiaran found in Sara (L), the wife taking her husband’s surname was a custom adopted in the 20^th 20th century. Married women had formerly used their father’s surname or the name of their childhood farmstead throughout their life. In Obanos (N), it was seen that women keep their surname but it is followed with the name of the paternal farmstead from which she came, thus: “M.ª Carmen the one from Rebolé”.