Surnames
List of surnames. Click a letter to view surnames starting with the selected letter.
Surnames (surnames or family names). What do they represent? Surname or family name is the name given by law to us from our parents, to be more exact, from our father. This is the most common case, but sometimes we inherit the surname from our mother or we have two surnames from both of our parents, father and mother. In most cultures around the world it is common to inherit the surname from your parents, while each culture has its own rules or ways of forming or inheriting a surname.
Traditionally, in most European countries and around the world, the accepted rule is that a woman takes her husband’s last name after being married to him and then their children have also their father’s surname. If the father of the child is unknown or he does not acknowledge the paternity, the child gets his mother’s last name.
People often want to know whether their surname has some kind of meaning, what the origin of their surname is and when it was first mentioned.