Surname conventions and laws vary around the world. This article gives an overview of surnames around the world.
Over the course of some fourteen centuries, the Romans and other peoples of Italy employed a system of nomenclature that differed from that used by other cultures of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, consisting of a combination of personal and family names. Although conventionally referred to as the tria nomina, the combination of praenomen, nomen, and cognomen that have come to be regarded as the basic elements of the Roman name in fact represent a continuous process of development, from at least the seventh century BC to the end of the seventh century AD. The names that developed as part of this system became a defining characteristic of Roman civilization, and although the system itself vanished during the Early Middle Ages, the names themselves exerted a profound influence on the development of European naming practices, and many continue to survive in modern languages.
A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather, or an earlier male ancestor. It is the male equivalent of a matronymic.
A surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person, although several given names and surnames are possible in the full name. In modern times the "hereditary" requirement is a traditional, although common, interpretation, since in most countries a person has a right for a name change.
Onomastics is the study of proper names, including their etymology, history, and use.
Korean names are names that place their origin in, or are used in, Korea. A Korean name in the modern era typically consists of a surname followed by a given name, with no middle names. A number of Korean terms for names exist. For full names, seongmyeong, seongham, or ireum (이름) are commonly used. When a Korean name is written in Hangul, there is no space between the surname and the given name.
Chinese names are personal names used by individuals from Greater China and other parts of the Sinophone world. Sometimes the same set of Chinese characters could be chosen as a Chinese name, a Hong Kong name, a Japanese name, a Korean name, a Malaysian Chinese name, or a Vietnamese name, but they would be spelled differently due to their varying historical pronunciation of Chinese characters.
A personal name, full name or prosoponym is the set of names by which an individual person or animal is known. When taken together as a word-group, they all relate to that one individual. In many cultures, the term is synonymous with the birth name or legal name of the individual. In linguistic classification, personal names are studied within a specific onomastic discipline, called anthroponymy. As of 2023, aside from humans, dolphins and elephants have been known to use personal names.
A given name is the part of a personal name that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group who have a common surname. The term given name refers to a name usually bestowed at or close to the time of birth, usually by the parents of the newborn. A Christian name is the first name which is given at baptism, in Christian custom.
In various cultures, a middle name is a portion of a personal name that is written between a person's given name and surname. A middle name is often abbreviated and is then called middle initial or just initial.
Nomenclature is a system of names or terms, or the rules for forming these terms in a particular field of arts or sciences. The principles of naming vary from the relatively informal conventions of everyday speech to the internationally agreed principles, rules, and recommendations that govern the formation and use of the specialist terminology used in scientific and any other disciplines.
Indonesian names and naming customs reflect the multicultural and multilingual nature of the over 17,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago. The world's fourth most populous country, Indonesia is home to more than 1,300 ethnic groups, each with their own culture, custom, and language. The Javanese are the largest single group, comprising around 40 percent of Indonesia's total population.
Named-entity recognition (NER) (also known as (named)entity identification, entity chunking, and entity extraction) is a subtask of information extraction that seeks to locate and classify named entities mentioned in unstructured text into pre-defined categories such as person names, organizations, locations, medical codes, time expressions, quantities, monetary values, percentages, etc.
A Dharma name is a new name acquired during both lay and monastic Buddhist initiation rituals in Mahayana Buddhism and monastic ordination in Theravada Buddhism. The name is traditionally given by a Buddhist monastic, and is given to newly ordained monks, nuns and laity. Dharma names are considered aspirational, not descriptive.
Indian names are based on a variety of systems and naming conventions, which vary from region to region. In Indian culture, names hold profound significance and play a crucial role in an individual's life. The importance of names is deeply rooted in the country's diverse and ancient cultural heritage. Names are also influenced by religion and caste and may come from epics. In Hindu culture, names are often chosen based on astrological and numerological principles. It is believed that a person's name can influence their destiny, and selecting the right name is essential for a prosperous and harmonious life. Astrologers may be consulted to ensure a name aligns with the individual's birth chart. India's population speaks a wide variety of languages and nearly every major religion in the world has a following in India. This variety makes for subtle, often confusing, differences in names and naming styles. Due to historical Indian cultural influences, several names across South and Southeast Asia are influenced by or adapted from Indian names or words.
Anthroponymy is the study of anthroponyms, the proper names of human beings, both individual and collective. Anthroponymy is a branch of onomastics.
In information extraction, a named entity is a real-world object, such as a person, location, organization, product, etc., that can be denoted with a proper name. It can be abstract or have a physical existence. Examples of named entities include Barack Obama, New York City, Volkswagen Golf, or anything else that can be named. Named entities can simply be viewed as entity instances.
Personal names in Bengali-speaking countries consist of one or several given names and a surname. The given is usually gender-specific. A name is usually cited in the "Western order" of "given name, surname", though the practise is neither adopted from the West nor universal. Personal names may depend generally on the person's religion and also have origins from other languages like Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Pali, but they are used and pronounced as according to the native Bengali language.
A matrilineal surname or matriname is a family name inherited from one's mother, and maternal grandmother, and so on whose line of descent is called a mother-line, mitochondrial line, or matriline. A matriname passed on to subsequent issue is unchanged, as compared to a matronymic, which is derived from the first name of each new mother.
An Afghan personal name consists of a given name and sometimes a surname at the end. Personal names are generally not divided into first and family names; a single name is recognized as a full personal name, and the addition of further components – such as additional given names, regional, or ethnic family/clan names or patronymics – is often a matter of parents' choice. This structure is shared amongst the different ethnicities of Afghanistan and people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
