#surnames — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #surnames, aggregated by home.social.
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started a page with the list of #surnames in my #familyHistory Nine generations done, but the deeper layers may still take a little time. https://proseandpassion.blogspot.com/p/family-history-names.html
#names #genealogy -
New Content on Patreon
Introduction novaTopFlex, geoTopFlex, and futoTopFlex will attempt to maintain a Patreon blog and occasionally post new content about different nations and nationalities as appropriate, depending on particular societal contexts associated with each country and region mentioned throughout. Access The Patreon site is accessible at https://www.patreon.com/@novaTopFlex and is intended to be associated with the Three Identities overall. Recent posts, however, are particularly focused toward […]https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/08/13/new-content-on-patreon/
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The Diversity of Naming Traditions
Introduction Naming traditions across the European continent are every bit as varied as the cultural, linguistic, and historical diversity that exists throughout the region. While some of the names may overlap between related areas and communities, different naming traditions result in a significant diversity of names all across the European continent. The Traditions While some European names are hyperlocal, as is the case with Sinnott in County Wexford 🇮🇪 or with many names […]https://novatopflex.wordpress.com/2026/08/13/the-diversity-of-naming-traditions/
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Your surname now has a to-do list.
Not a grade. A list, with counts: 99 unconnected profiles here, 26 unsourced there.
New on WikiTree+ 👉 https://countrygirlgenealogy.blogspot.com/2026/08/SurnameToDoList.html
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Does the name of Hungary’s next PM really translate as Peter Hungarian?
In short: yes. And although his party’s election victory a few weeks ago was truly unprecedented, Péter Magyar’s last name is not nearly as unique as it may sound to foreign ears.
A quick overview of the history of Hungarian surnames will likely shed some light on why this is so.
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Hype for the Future 157/284: More Content on futoTopFlex
Introduction At https://www.youtube.com/@novaTopFlex, new content is slated for surname information associated with the Scottish Lowlands, as well as England, Wales, and the Channel Islands (Ireland has already been referred to separately). Surname Content The content will also be available in a paid format at https://www.patreon.com/@novaTopFlex to serve the reading community, as well as to provide spellings where the spellings in the audio may already be ambiguous. -
Examine the frequencies of various surname groups in the United Kingdom and Ireland to determine where and when your paternal ancestors lived #surnames
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You've heard of double-barrelled surnames, maybe you've even heard of triple-barrelled surnames (hello, Ralph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes) but have you ever heard of a quintuple-barrelled surname?
Behold the Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville family... and their coat of arms, not so much quartered (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartering_(heraldry)) as sliced and diced and finely minced.
#names #surnames #heraldry #history -
Fuller Names: Names that do more
You’ve heard of full names but let me introduce you to even fuller names.
In Iain M. Banks‘s Culture novels, names act as an address if the person concerned stays where they were brought up [ref]. This got me thinking about the roles of names in the age of The Internet. There is a lot of pressure on parents (well some parents) to give their children unique names these days. Mostly this results in some questionable name choices. Add to that the push for a unique personal brand, chosen handles, nicknames, deadnames, and all the other naming stuff. This left me wondering if Mr Banks might not have had a good idea we can use.
For fun, I thought I would see if I could work out a structure for a naming system that could be a unique route/reference to a single person. That got me thinking of other fiction that does interesting or cool things with names and titles.
I’m going to start with a list of name things that could be used:
- Given name (or new name) [Legal Name]
- Family name (surname) [Family]
- Nickname and/or handle(s) [Handle]
- Title(s) (Mr, Mrs, Mx, Ms, Lord, HRH etc.) [Title]
- Chosen name [Known As]
- Location [Address Parts]
- Birthplace [Birthplace]
- Career or profession [Profession]
- Parents [Father] [Mother]
- Employer [Employer]
- Pronouns
- Notable activities [Activities]
- DNS/Profile [Lookup Request Service]
- Letters after name [LAN]
- Esquire (perhaps)
The basics
The first few should be relatively obvious, For example, you might refer to me as Mr Matthew David “Lord Matt” Brown. That’s the first four – all common name and title things.
Then we get to known as. I tend to go by Matt.
Address parts
Address parts are the section of naming inspired by Iain M. Banks. I suppose that the address section could have many parts the use of which could be optional because not all of us want to doxx ourselves. In this imaginary world, the full address part of the name is used for official stuff (like opening a line of credit, utility billing, voter registration, etc.
Culture names act as an address if the person concerned stays where they were brought up. Let’s take an example; Balveda, from Consider Phlebas. Her full name is Juboal-Rabaroansa Perosteck Alseyn Balveda dam T’seif. The first part tells you she was born/brought up on Rabaroan Plate, in the Juboal stellar system (where there is only one Orbital in a system, the first part of a name will often be the name of the Orbital rather than the star); Perosteck is her given name (almost invariably the choice of one’s mother), Alseyn is her chosen name (people usually choose their names in their teens, and sometimes have a succession through their lives; an alseyn is a graceful but fierce avian raptor common to many Orbitals in the region which includes the Juboal system); Balveda is her family name (usually one’s mother’s family name) and T’seif is the house/estate she was raised within. The ‘sa’ affix on the first part of her name would translate into ‘er’ in English (we might all start our names with ‘Sun-Earther’, in English, if we were to adopt the same nomenclature), and the ‘dam’ part is similar to the German ‘von’. Of course, not everyone follows this naming-system, but most do, and the Culture tries to ensure that star and Orbital names are unique, to avoid confusion.
Using Banks’s system we would all acquire Sun-Earther as part of our location name or Sol-3 perhaps. I took inspiration from history for birthplace and differed from Banks slightly. See Birthplace for more of my ideas there. I justify differing in that (1) there is no reason not to riff on the idea and (2) “not everyone follows this naming-system” so we are still canonical if we too differ.
One fun idea might be to play with postcodes. Most countries have them. Many that have postcodes (zip codes in the US) have letters in them. For those with letters, one could substitute words for each letter.
For example, my postcode area is CT9. So I could choose to render that at Character Transcriber as a reference to both TTRPGs and my writing.
For brevity (acknowledging the irony here), it would probably be traditional to include the minimum needed lines to find you. On top of that, it might be optional just how much you include.
For example, you live at 237 Madeup Street, Somecounty, Smalltown, AB1 2CD. You might choose to render that as Madeup Smalltown A Brilliant (1/2) Cool Dude. Or you may choose to forego the address most of the time.
Birthplace
This one is a nod back to the invention of surnames. My reference here is Leonardo da Vinci whose name means Leonardo from Venice. Thus, part of your name could be “de [Birthplace]”.
Career or profession
This is another nod back to the invention of surnames. Many surnames trace their origin to professions. Names like Smith, Brown, Baker, Tailor, etc..
As a bonus this part of your fuller name answers the two most common questions, “Who are you?” and “What do you do?”.
Parents
Another early surname thing but also something nerdy and sci-fi. #
Surnames such as Johnson, Matthewson, Babson, and so forth first came about to define a person by who a parent was.
No for the sci-fi bit. In Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, we meet the Nietzscheans who carry the names of their parents. This takes the form of [Name] from [Father] out of [Mother]. You can add that to your fuller name.
I guess you could also add professions for your parents too.
That would make mine by John the artist out of Rosemary the teacher
Employer
For Employer as part of your name, we look to Max Barry’s book Jennifer Government. In Barry’s setting people take their employer as their surname. Guess who Jennifer works for…
As we are not a dystopia, perhaps a fuller name might hyphenate the employer with the family name. For me, that would be Brown-Self (as I do not work for a company).
Esquire
Esquire is sometimes used as a general courtesy title for any man in a formal setting, with no precise significance, usually as a suffix to his name, and commonly with initials only. Chuck an “Esq.” in if you want. After your location name part seems to feel about right to me.
Pronouns
This is where I got a bit creative. Rather than list the pronouns, we can demonstrate them.
Take both [Profession] and [Kown As] (chosen name) we can make:
[she|he|they|…] [are|is|…] the [Profession] call [her|him|them|…] [Known As]
For me, this would be “he is an Author call him Matt”
Activities
This is a section where you can bulk out your name with things you do that are integral to your identity. I might choose “gamer, geek, coder, writer, chair of Thanet Creative”
DNS: Lookup Request Service
DNS stands for Domain Name Service it is what helps your computer turn authorbuzz.co.uk into a unique network address so the page can load. Perhaps you don’t want to give out your address and phone number but you might want to enable people to request those details. Your Lookup Request Service is where people can go for more information. Like, for example, your online profile. Like my about me address https://me.lordmatt.co.uk/.
Letters after name
We already have a system of letters after names like BSc, PhD, MD, DLitt etc.. They are called Post-Nominal Letters if you were wondering. They still go at the end.
The Oxford University Calendar style guide lists diplomas and certificates after degrees so I’m claiming HNDip [ref].
Putting the fuller name all together.
We are left with a pattern for fuller names that looks like this:
[Title] [Legal Name] [Handle[ AKA [Handle]…]] [Family]-[Employer] da [Birthplace] by [Father] out of [Mother]; [|she|he|they|…] [|are|is|…] the [Profession] [called|call [her|him|them|…]] [Known As] the [Activities] in [Address Parts] referencing [Lookup Request Service] [LAN]
For me, I am unfussed about my pronouns which can easily be inferred so I skipped some of the pronoun formations for better “flow”. For the same reason, I added a semi-colon after parents to disambiguate transitions.
I am the one and only Mr. Matthew David “Lord Matt” Brown-Self da Ramsgate Esq. by John the Artist out of Rosemary the Teacher; the Author called Matt the gamer, geek, coder, writer, and chair of Thanet Creative in Sol-3 Kent Character Transcriber 9 referencing me.lordmatt.co.uk HNDip
What’s your fuller name?
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It’s maddening to encounter the uneducated attitude that men in the USA can’t have #hyphenated #surnames. My husband & I have shared the #legal surname O’Moore-Klopf for 31 years now. Catch up with the times, people!
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Everyone in Japan could have the same surname by 2531 due to unique law | indy100
https://www.indy100.com/news/japan-same-surname-sato-2531 -
@GraveyardSnoop in my genealogy classes people are often surprised to learn that consistent spelling of surnames is fairly recent. 16c documents can have 4 or more spellings of the same surname on one parchment. #surnames #genealogy @genealogy
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In my second #OnePlaceStudies10 blog post for @SocOnePlaceStudies published on #OnePlaceWednesday, I reveal my list of the Top Ten Surnames of my Waters Upton #OnePlaceStudy!
https://www.one-place-studies.org/the-top-ten-surnames-of-waters-upton/
#FamilyHistory #LocalHistory #OnePlaceStudies #Surnames #WatersUpton #Shropshire
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Interested in the #surnames of people in your #OnePlaceStudy / #FamilyHistory, and finding out where those surnames are/were most prevalent? Here are three resources shared by Debbie Kennett and IGRS (the Irish #Genealogical Research Society) on Twitter:
Worldnames (current data from 198 countries): https://apps.cdrc.ac.uk/worldnames/index.php
GBNames (uses historic censuses and recent consumer registers): https://apps.cdrc.ac.uk/gbnames/
Irish Surname Maps for the 1901 & 1911 Census of Ireland: https://www.barrygriffin.com/surname-maps/irish/
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🇳🇫 #TAIWAN: ❝History of surnames reveals true identities❞
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The evidence is sufficient to show that it is false for Taiwan’s #history #textbooks to claim that “#Taiwanese are part of an immigrant society from #China 🇨🇳.”If Taiwanese were truly #Chinese immigrants, they would have already had #Han Chinese #surnames, and therefore would have had no need to change them.
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https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/02/12/2003794194 -
When the Government Makes You Get a Surname - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58u5Sa-UVi0 -
One of the resources I've run into while looking at/for #Japanese #surnames and their meanings is https://japanese-names.info/. While it claims to be "Created by a native Japanese", I'm finding it impossible to trust. It has some errors that look pretty elementary to me.
One is in the name Murasaki, properly spelled 村崎. The first part, 村 mura, means village. The second, 崎 saki, is translated as "a grim" on this site, while most sources give "cape, promontory, spit, small peninsula". 1/5 #names
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Kelly Wheaton :warriors:🌹🦫💧
@kwheaton
Avid researcher, gardener, reader, grandma & genealogist. Happily married more than a 1/2 century! Author of Beginner's Guide to Genetic Genealogy. Political. Website where you can find The Beginner's Guide to Genetic Genealogy (free) and my blog WheatonWood.com Many interests from history to maps, DNA to photography. List of #SURNAMES & #PLACES https://wheatonwood.com/about/ #follow #following #boost #followfriday #altext #gimp
Deer in road
By Carl J Shoemaker -
It's time for S4Ep6, with the brilliant Claire Bradley (@cbgenealogy ), who tells us about how she got into family history, about her #Irish political ancestor #MichaelJoyce who survived elections and 5 shipwrecks, and we're on the trail of Thomas Reilly and Elizabeth Murphy... which is a challenge given they're two of the most common #surnames in #ireland
https://familyhistoriespodcast.com/2022/12/06/s04ep06-the-politician-with-claire-bradley/
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An idea for #genealogy #FamilyHistory #Geneadons
When composing a post with a list of surnames you’re researching…hashtag #surnames so a search can be done to find all these posts.
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#genealogy to my fellow #genealogists and #FamilyHistory writers who have followed the #twittermigration this is my 2nd day and I feel happy here. The very best thing is seeing old friends and meeting new ones. What we discovered is use #hashtag as much as you can. Introduce yourself with a list of #'s and include them in the # place on your profile. I think my next post will be a list of #surnames. I have already posted a list of #countries my ancestors came from.
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NEW TEXT. What’s in a (full) name.
This is why now I use my two surnames instead of just one.CW: migration, intergenerational trauma, CSA and colonialism.
https://cynthiarodriguez.org/2021/03/14/whats-in-a-full-name/
#Culture #México #intergeneration #lineage #shadowwork #surnames #lastnames
