That's one reasoning behind it, though it seems like we'll never quite know the full backstory unless someone from the older fandom could tell. What we do know: He gave the names in May '07, in response to a fan questioning him what names the characters would have if they were normal people. In January and February '08, he gave a few more names (Canada and Belarus). Then he stopped the practice after that. Some think it was only one blog post that he deleted, but the story's a bit more complex XD
Himaruya's had a few different "blogs", I'm not counting the ones he had before making Hetalia: - His Kitayume update diaries. Megalodon.jp had saved some of the '06 and '07 ones, but some got lost in their recent site crash. - A YahooBlogs-hosted one that he had from January to April/May '08 or so, it got deleted when he moved to FC2. The WebArchive has a cache of the page, but none of the images work. -This current Bamboo Thicket blog on FC2. tl;dr: He might have been pressured by multiple fan questions, or it might have been that one that he answered. But outside of one strip with "Alfred" and Spain's "April Fools", he never really used them in canon. A Japanese fan once commented here though that Himaruya had said there was a reason he didn't give Ludwig a last name and we'd find out, make of that what you will.
So when he did his site cleaning, he deleted all those old update diaries, including the May one that contained the name list. Himaruya has a habit of cleaning out old stuff, though sometimes some still remains because he hasn't gotten around to updating it.
longish explanation!
What we do know: He gave the names in May '07, in response to a fan questioning him what names the characters would have if they were normal people. In January and February '08, he gave a few more names (Canada and Belarus). Then he stopped the practice after that. Some think it was only one blog post that he deleted, but the story's a bit more complex XD
Himaruya's had a few different "blogs", I'm not counting the ones he had before making Hetalia:
- His Kitayume update diaries. Megalodon.jp had saved some of the '06 and '07 ones, but some got lost in their recent site crash.
- A YahooBlogs-hosted one that he had from January to April/May '08 or so, it got deleted when he moved to FC2. The WebArchive has a cache of the page, but none of the images work.
-This current Bamboo Thicket blog on FC2.
tl;dr: He might have been pressured by multiple fan questions, or it might have been that one that he answered. But outside of one strip with "Alfred" and Spain's "April Fools", he never really used them in canon. A Japanese fan once commented here though that Himaruya had said there was a reason he didn't give Ludwig a last name and we'd find out, make of that what you will.
So when he did his site cleaning, he deleted all those old update diaries, including the May one that contained the name list. Himaruya has a habit of cleaning out old stuff, though sometimes some still remains because he hasn't gotten around to updating it.
And yes, Vargas IS a Spanish surname XD