#surnames

[incognitopolls]

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[mapsontheweb]

Most common surnames in Europe

[beautiful-basque-country]

The most common surname by region.[x]

Nice to see Basque surnames Etcheverry [meaning "new house"] and García [from gartzea "the young"] thriving in the south 🧡🧡

[cheatcodcs]

◜  some last names !  ◞

hey  pals  !!!  below  the  cut  you  can  find  a  list  containing  (  #  50   )  last  names  to  use  for  your  characters  .  some  of  these  names  i  found  on  google  and  the  rest  are  just  random  ones  my  head  is  compiled  of  .  please  like  /  reblog  if  you  found  these  helpful  !

keating

yeager

jacobs

o’neal

porter

jennings

hudson

bates

powers

west

douglas

rojas

hardy

vanero

graves

frey

daniels

fitzgerald

stokes

madden

hart

jenkins

sharpe

lopez

knight

flowers

sutton

khan

walker

chang

mercado

molina

kaiser

wang

zamora

moon

velasquez

forbes

vargas

holt

driscoll

fusco

trevino

ellison

armas

burton

ortega

harvey

saunders

decker

[hozaloza]

Um

Why does Ben have Aiden's last name, isn't his mom related to Aiden's mom??

Like, we all know how surnames work in America; Wife typically takes the husband's last name, or they take both (or she doesn't take it at all, idk). Aiden's dad is obviously the one who had Clark as his surname. However, Ben also has this surname, but the dads aren't related, the moms are, how'd he get Daniel's surname??

Note that the Clark moms are sisters, because Niaomi literally said "I think what my sister is trying to say..."

So... how did Ben get the surname Clark? Either Red wasn't thinking about the parents (sorry no offense 😭), or he changed his last name...? Idk, I just realized that while thinking about a possible Thomas Aiden duet with 'Stayed Gone' (Rainbow factory au real??)

alr ty for joining my ted talk

bye bye for now

[cardboard-crack]

[doufudanshi]

hi! I'm a big fan of your translations, thanks for sharing! I was wondering if you've ever done your own translations/interpretations of the names of the characters in mdzs?

hi!! ahh thank you! yes, I do have a (wip) post with my translations of character titles (eg cssr) and proper nouns in mdzs here! and I actually have been meaning to post an analysis of the mdzs surnames for a long time, so I'll use this ask to do so! thank you for reminding me!!

note: the characters are in traditional chinese :)

魏 Wei

this one is pretty self-explanatory for anyone who can read chinese. on the right is a 鬼 gui radical, which means ghost! for our lil 鬼道之王 king of the ghost path <3

(this radical also appears in a lot of words for "soul," such as 魂魄)

藍 Lan

I've often seen people simply say 藍 lan means "blue," and that wouldn't be wrong but it also wouldn't be completely correct. similar to how wwx clarifies that the 義 yi of 義城 yi city is not that of 俠義 heroic justice, but that of 義莊 coffin home, the in-universe definition from chapter 18 is that the lan surname is derived from 伽藍 qielan, which is a loan word from sanskrit, “saṃgharāma,” meaning buddhist monastery.

溫 Wen

溫 wen means temperature, warm. the wens do love their sun. pretty straightforward!

金 Jin

also straightforward. the jins are rich and opulent, and 金 jin means gold!

聶 Nie

here's where things get interesting. this is the one that made me think more about the surnames, and the reason why they're written in traditional here. I had always read nhs's name in simplified (聂) but when I saw it in traditional (聶), it clicked.

not only does 聶 nie mean "to whisper," but nhs has three 耳 ears in his name!!

AND INDEED, NHS HAS EARS EVERYWHERE, AND HE IS ALWAYS LISTENING. 👂👂👂

江 Jiang

this one I had to think about for a bit. of course, there's the most direct answer, which is that 江 jiang means river—and the jiang's are, of course, well known for their lotus pier and rivers and such. but a more interesting thought that occurred to me was that 江 may be a reference to 江湖 jianghu, aka rogue martial artist communities who aren't affiliated with mainstream society often seen in wuxia fantasy novels. those part of the jianghu do not adhere to government/law, but rather live under individual moral codes of conduct re righteousness, justice, vengeance, etc. quoting jeannette ng's essay on wuxia:

In Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts History and Postcolonial History, Petrus Liu translates jianghu as “stateless”, which further emphasizes that the hero’s rejection of and by the machineries of government. Jianghu is thus a world that rejects the dictates of the state in favor of divine virtue and reason, but also of a sense of self created through clan and community.

the jiang family precepts and ideals seem v aligned with this aspect of jianghu morality—after all, jc never lets us (or himself) forget that wwx's acts of vigilante heroism are those of an ideal jiang.

Bonus: 莫 Mo

mo xuanyu was only ever a blank canvas. 莫 mo means nothing, no one, none. </3

[soulshines]

spanish  surnames   :   a  masterlist   

below  the  cut  you’ll  find  a  list  containing  #  150  spanish  surnames  sorted  alphabetically  .  these  are  some  of  my  personal  favorites  so  please  enjoy  and  consider  giving  this  post  a  like  /  reblog  if  you  found  it  useful  !

acevedo

águila

aguirre

almada

alonso

ángeles

aragón

araiza

arias

arjona

armas

arriaga

atenas

augusto

ávila

ayala

báez

barrera

bautista

beltrán

blanco

bolívar

bonilla

bracho

cabrera

camacho

cardoza

carrera

casillas

castañeda

castillo

cervantes

claudio

cortés

costa

cuervo

dávalos

dávila

de aguilar

de alba

de carvajal

de la vega

de lucena

de narváez

de peralta

del río

escobar

escobedo

espino

espinosa

estrada

farías

fernandino

ferrera

fierro

galindo

gamboa

gavilán

garza

granada

granados

grijalba

guardado

guerrero

heredia

herrera

hurtado

ibáñez

ibarra

jiménez

jaramillo

lafuente

leal

león

leyva

lima

lira

lombardo

lozano

luna

maldonado

maltés

marciel

miranda

molina

montano

montenegro

montoya

moralo

naranjo

navarro

nieto

noriega

novo

obregón

olivero

olmeda

olmos

orozco

osuna

ortega

ortiz

palomar

paz

pedrosa

peralta

perdomo

pineda

prado

reyes

reynoso

rivas

rivera

robles

rocha

rodríguez

rojas

romero

román

rubio

salinas

salvador

sandoval

santángel

santiago

serrano

solano

solar

soto

sáez

toro

ureña

uriarte

uribe

usaga

uveda

valdiva

valencia 

valentín

valenzuela

vargas

vega

velarde

ventura

vidal

vivero

zambrano

zamora

zelaya

zepeda

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

idk if im the only person but i absolutely despise trying to come up with last names. first names are so fun but last names can suck my ass. anyway here's the absolutely best source for last names i have ever found (also great for first names too)

[queersrus]

I have a character named Arthur that currently has no last name. He comes from a small town, and works at his family’s trucking company. It’s difficult to describe, but something almost whimsical or even unmistakable when heard. Like that good old small town gossip about him using just his last name. Something oddly, magic sounding, but sticking to that small town name type of thing. So sorry for rambling, he’s just difficult to describe! Thanks! ^^

whimsical small town last names

starr

hart

fable

whaley

maebry

ostara

cassidy

ember

fischer

faolan

sheppard

weaver

cosima

nova

colby

cosmo

crispin

crosby

fairchild

starchild

mancer

merlin

mordred

argavain

lionel

[justmetheguywhoread4120dccomics]

[useless-catalanfacts]

I'm guessing now it's the same as Spanish because of imperialism, but did Catalan names originally follow the First name + Second name + Father's surname + Mother's surname naming system?

Yes, nowadays we use both surnames. We can't be sure of what would have happened, but the two surnames we have now were a Spanish imposition in most cases.

Before the 19th century, most Catalan men used only one surname. Only the upper classes had more surnames, since they often wanted to keep stacking titles (think of those really long names of nobles, if you marry into another powerful family and yours is powerful too you wouldn't want either of the lineages to get lost, the most titles you can "collect" the better!). Women could often use two surnames after getting married (their father's and their husband's).

In 1870, the Spanish law decided that civil register should have 2 surnames (first the father's and secondly the mother's) for each person to identify them better. That's how people started to have two surnames.

The most visible effect of this law, however, is the spelling. When Spanish-speaker state officers had to write down Catalan surnames, they would write them down according to Spanish spelling rules. That's why many Catalan surnames have a "Spanishified" spelling, like "Peña" instead of Penya, "Calzada" instead of Calçada, "Lladó" instead of Lledó, etc.

(As for first names, usually we only have 1 except you've been baptized, but that's not an official name and how much those 1 or 2 extra names are counted as part of your name depends on each person or family)

More information about the origin of Catalan surnames below the cut.

In the Middle Ages, Catalans had a name and a "nickname", often referred to a characteristic. Many of our surnames come from here. For example, physical attributes like Roig ("red", red-haired), Tort ("hooked"), Petit ("small"), Rossell ("blond"), Calvet ("balding"), etc; or jobs like Ferrer ("blacksmith"), Fuster ("carpenter"), Carnisser ("butcher"), Oller ("potter"), etc.

Among Catalan people, the use of surnames started being generalized in the 9th century.

In legal documents of the time, we see people are referred by who their father is. If the text was in Latin (even though people already spoke Catalan, Latin was still the most used language in writing), the first name would be in nominative case and the father's name in genitive case; if the text was in Catalan, it would be after the preposition "de", meaning "of" (same meaning as the cases in Latin). For example, Berenguer son of Ramon was Berengarius Raimundi in Latin and Berenguer de Ramon in Catalan.

Genitive case often ends in -is, that's why in Spanish and Aragonese you can find lots of surnames that come from a name+ez. For example: Sánchez would be the son of Sancho, Hernández of Hernán, López of Lope, González of Gonzalo, Rodríguez of Rodrigo, Martínez of Martín... Even nowadays, in Spain, 14 out of the 17 most common surnames are a name+ez! (Source)

This is not the case in Catalan. This Latin-derived surnames didn't become used. We only have 3 surnames with this origin (Peris, Sanxís, and Llopis) and they arrived to us from influence of Aragon, Castile and Navarre. Besides, neither of them is very common, unlike their Spanish equivalents. There was an exception in the Valencian Country, because some areas had a lot of Aragonese people as well as Catalan people or at least a strong Aragonese influence, so there existed more surnames related to the Aragonese ones.

From the 11th century on, the nobles started using the name of their lands as a surname, either after "de" (de Barcelona, d'Empúries...) or in adjective form (Barceló, Tarragó, Giró, Tàrrec). This started in the nobility to know who inherited what territories, but it was soon followed by the lower classes as well.

Lower class people often didn't have a territory to refer to and so they would use a name that made reference to their farmhouse, where they live, or other geographical terms. From here we get many of the most common Catalan surnames such as Riera ("stream"), Torrent ("watercourse"), Puig ("hill"), Pujol ("hill"), Vall ("valley") or Valls ("valleys"), Coma ("mountain pass"), Pomar ("apple orchard"), Vinyes ("vineyards"), Rovira ("oak tree forest"), Ribes ("shores") or simply the names of towns or areas like Solsona, Bages, Segarra, Agramunt, Vila, Canet, Cardona, Cabrera, Güell, Barberà, Cerdà...

All of this applies to men, but it worked differently for women because they weren't considered carriers of lineage in the same right as men, and were seen as under the property of a man (father or husband). In the Middle Ages, Catalan women usually had a feminine version of the father's surname (for example, if the father is Ferrer, she would be Ferrera). After getting married, women sometimes had both the father's and husband's surnames or only the husband's.

Source: Janer Torrens, Antoni (2014), "L'origen dels noms i cognoms catalans. Les arrels antroponímiques que marquen una identitat", II Congrés de la Societat d'Onomàstica i la XXVII Jornada d'Antroponímia i Toponímia de la UB. PDF.

[mapsontheweb]

Most common surnames in each of Canada's provinces and territories

[dissociative-disaster]

So I started playing Elden Ring today, and it reminded me of a funny thing FromSoft games sometimes do with the Welsh language.

So obviously in ER there’s the character Blaidd (idk who he really is I just know he’s popular - I’m only like two hours in). Which I find funny because while to a non-Welsh speaker his name sounds cool and fantasy-ish, a Welsh speaker will immediately recognise it to just be the word for Wolf, which is quite funny. There are a few examples of these in soulsborne games, and chief among them to me is Gwyn, Lord of Cinder from Dark Souls.

Gwyn’s name comes from the Welsh folkloric figure Gwyn ap Nydd (‘ap’ has a similar usage in Welsh to ‘ibn’ in arabic, so his name means ‘Gwyn, son of Nydd) - (sometimes) king of the otherworld of Anwn, who also appears in Arthurian legends. This is well and good, but names don’t come from nowhere, and in Welsh there are generally a few places names come from. In this case, the name Gwyn probably started life as a surname.

While a lot of people might think them similar enough, Welsh surnames differ slightly in origin from English surnames. Until very recently (around the finance act of 1894 i think but don’t quote me on that this is from memory), surnames were less an inherited familial thing and more of an adjective on someone’s name, so that you could know which John out of the thirty-seven Johns in everyone’s circle of influence is being discussed. This was probably the same in England, actually, but the interesting thing is that in Wales (or at least North Wales) people still talk like this today. Nobody cares what your surname is - they know you by an adjective or nickname.

This adjective or nickname comes from one of four places generally: your job, the name of your home, the name of a more well-known family member, or the colour of your hair. For instance, my Taid (grandpa), John. Nobody knew John Owen, but everyone knew John Siop - he lived in Siop Isaf (literally ‘Lower Shop’).

Hair colour is less-used nowadays, but used to be very common, and is the basis for many surnames. Using a colour as an adjective for a person’s name in Welsh refers to their hair colour, and those old nicknames tended to stick and become surnames. A few English surnames, actually, come from Welsh hair colour surnames - like Lloyd, which comes from Llwyd (Gray), or Wynn which is from Wyn (treigliad (it’s complicated) of Gwyn, meaning ‘White’).

So we’re back at Gwyn. Gwyn ap Nydd’s name, then, was a descriptor of his hair colour. Which is interesting, but not my point. The point I was trying to get to before rambling on about the etymology of Welsh surnames was that Gwyn, and its variant Wyn, are very common Welsh first names. But the reason I find the name ‘Gwyn, Lord of Cinder’ funny is because Gwyn is the name of my five-foot-three bald uncle who plays golf and smiles like a fairy from a medieval illustration.

[beautiful-basque-country]

Do you know of any links for researching Basque family names? My heritage is Cuban with the surname of Arencibia. Unfortunately I can’t access genealogical records from the US.

Kaixo anon!

The Academy of the Basque Language doesn't list your surname, but it does list the variation "Arantzibia", which means "hawthorn ford". It's possible that in one moment in the past Arantzibia was understood as / directly written like Arencibia.

Unfortunately, baptism records are kept in the churches, and civil registration isn't open for public consultation, so leaving you the link to the Academy of Basque Language website where they list Basque names and surnames is everything I can do, sorry 😩.

[lildarkchapel]

me, looking through the meaning of different English surnames (don’t ask why): hm, what about Michael Sheen, I wondered where his name derives from…

ancestry.com: […] English: nickname for an attractive person from Middle English shene ‘fair comely handsome’ (Old English scēne) […]

👀 👀 *coughs*

if you don’t believe me (plus in German schön means beautiful so yeah…I should have realised that way sooner…):