Jun.-prof. Maite Wilke Berenguer*

Juniorprofessor for Interdisciplinary Mathematics

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Website

Since this often creates confusion let me clarify the structure of my name.

The truth

First/given name: Maite

Last/surname(s!): Wilke Berenguer (yes, both and no, no hyphen)

How to cite

Since most systems don‘t do well with two last names I have decided to add a hyphen to my name for my publications, so please cite my name as

Maite/M. Wilke-Berenguer.

How to pronounce

Please don‘t worry too much about this. Of course, I appreciate the effort, but I will not me mad at any interpretation of my name.

„Maite“ and „Berenguer“ are Spanish (well, „Maite“ is Basque..) and „Wilke“ is German.

You can handle „Maite“ and „Wilke“ intuitively. The one that typically scares people is „Berenguer“. But this one is easy, too: just ignore the „u“ and think of „Berenger“. If you want to perfect it, the „g“ is a hard „g“, as in „good“, not as in „gemini“. (Fun fact: that is exactly what the „u“ between the „g“ and the „e“ is for in the Spanish language.)
Alternatively you can just omit „Berenguer“ altogether, see the next paragraph.

How to address me (correctly)

Ms/Prof./Maite Wilke or Ms/Prof./Maite Wilke Berenguer are both perfectly fine and technically correct (see explanation below). (Hence, Ms/Prof./Maite Berenguer is not.)

And why is all that?

My name is really only confusing to any non-Spanish speaker*. I am half German and half Spanish, but my last name is build according to Spanish (traditional) laws. The rules are simple.

1) Every person has two last names.
2) When you get married, your name doesn‘t change, regardless of your gender.
3) Children receive one last name from each of the parents. Traditionally, this is the first last name of each of the parents, where the father‘s name is put first.
(Lately, Spain has modernized its legislation now allowing the parents to choose which of their two names they pass on and in which order they give them to the child.)

It‘s really very simple.

Now, typically, when addressing a person or in day-to-day usage, you will only use the first of the last names (hence „How to address me correctly“). The double name is really for official documents, but since a dominant part of the rest of the world only looks at the literal last name, I have to use both, otherwise people won‘t find me.

*The rules are similar in Portuguese-speaking countries, but the order of the last names is inversed.