Naming systems Name elements Teaching surnames Teaching given names

" Ours is a time of nationalism, chauvinism, fundamentalism, intolerance, migrations, expulsions, ethnic cleansing and mass killings, in which assimilation and self-assertion have become world-wide burning issues. Personal names are therefore playing a crucial role when people seek to define themselves and others"
Charles Kormos, 1997

 

Note: I realise that some of the links on this page no longer work: I am trying to find alternatives (late Dec 2003)

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Naming Systems of the World

There are 4 great traditions in name-generation:-

• The Far Eastern tradition (hereditary family name-generation or gender name -personal name)
• The Patronymic Surname tradition, widespread in sub-Saharan Africa
• The Personal Name tradition, with or without adornment by titles, abstractions, clan, caste or family references, or other names -typically of the Islamic world and parts of Southern Asia.
• The Western tradition of given name(s) - hereditary surname(s) is the most recent (but most rapidly growing worldwide??)

Source: Ehrensperger Report 2005- American Name Society

Excluding the UK, what other naming systems have you come into contact with?

• In your class?
• In your family?
• Experience abroad?

-Is a Western-style surname system common in the world? (In fact: Western style family names are actually unusual)

-What other name systems can you identify? (suggested link)

-Which cultures do not have family names?

-Visit the following sites for an indication of the main themes in the World history of surnames
link1 link2

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Group Projects

Investigate the following name systems, especially as to whether women's names change on marriage

• Arab
• Chinese
• Hispanic (e.g. link 1: link 2: link 3)
• Indian sub-continent e.g. Asian naming systems
• Iceland, Russia (suggested link1, link 2)
• Compare the naming systems of a Hindu, Muslim and Sikh (suggested link)

Identify what kind of naming system each uses: Convert you own name into that of each system

Can naming systems be primarily divided into whether they belong to cultures that are:-

• individual-orientated
• group orientated?

Just for fun, visit this link for the top names of a country of your choice
(note- no indication of size of the database, where the names are drawn from, strict frequency order, or type of naming system)

Questions

• Is the UK naming system justifiable in today's world of equality?
• Would you prefer the UK to have a different surnaming system?
• Would the Spanish system be more equitable?
• Or the Swedish practice, in which the child may be given either of its parent's surname or an original birthname.
• Or the practice in Canada, for that matter
  

• Are 1st generation immigrants of cultures with personal names, now adopting family names?
• Could a society function without names? like Number 7 in The Prisoner
• Can a society function with few family surnames?
• How may individual rights be affected in such a society?
  

  Case study -consequences of the decline of the number of surnames in China (suggested reading-short article: "O Rare John Smith." Economist [England] 335, no. 7917(June 1995): 68) suggested reading: Wren, Christopher. "A Problem for the Chinese : Millions of Namesakes." New York Times (December 1984): A20.)

• How are UK authorities coping with multi-ethnic surnames? Look at the guidance notes for judiciary issued by the Judicial Studies Board. Try the short cultural names quiz on the same site

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The elements of a name

Ask your class to analyse how their own name is constructed.

• Can they categorise each element?
• Does their name remain the same whatever the context e.g. between home and school?

Some attempts at definitions (try this yourself

Consider the names :

In the western tradition,

• the surname is often immutable - it passes unchanged to children.
• and given names are subject to the fashion of the age
  
  Adaptations to the given name can change its form

  Western names
  Initials	e.g. Anthony A. Hancock or A. Aloysius Hancock
  Omission	e.g. Anthony [ ] Hancock or [ ]Aloysius Hancock
  Shortened & 'pet' forms	e.g. Tony Hancock, or Tone
  Nickname + Surname (often rhyming with given name)	e.g. Boney Hancock
  Nickname alone	e.g. Monica (and any guesses how could that be derived from Hancock??)
  Name substitution	i.e. where a person decides to use a name other than on the birth certificate
  Non-Western Personal names
  Infixes:	de, vde., ben..."conjoined to the rest of the name, separated from it by white space or hyphens or dropped altogether e.g. Abdalsharif ~ Abd al-Sharif ~ Abd-Al-Sharif ~ Abdal Sharif (source: LAS)
  Cultural variations :	Imhemed/Mohamed (at least 40 ways of expressing the name Mohammed)
  Spelling transcription	In Arabic names, the letters K and Q can be used interchangeably so that "Qadafi" and "Kadafi" are variants of the same name

   

Surnames

- Single surnames can be modified through affixes which may be

-Double names

• Double-barrelled surnames : hyphenated or unhyphenated
  Hispanic names usually have two surnames, but it is the first of these that is the family name.
  The final name is the mother's maiden name - and may or may not be used
• Patronymic + Surname

Different forms of the same name

Transliteration

• Arabic names

Although an Arabic name might be written the same way in Arabic form, it can be interpreted in different ways in differing countries

• Chinese names

The mapping of a chinese character to the Roman alphabet can result in different forms.
The pictogram depicting 'Chang' could be alphabetised (reflecting Mandarin) as Chang, Zhang, Tsjang, Tchang, Jang

Other factors

• Titles and Qualifiers

The whole name can be circumscribed by:

Titles do not necessarily commence a name compound

• Filing order

In the Western tradition, the order of socially-expressed name is not that of the name as entered in a class register.

However, In Hungary, China and Korea, the surname comes first, before the given name. When placed in a Western context, Chinese may reverse the order to fit the Western model. If they go further, and add a Western given name, it might appear anywhere in the name order e.g. Yi Kyung Hee becomes Kathy Yi Kyung Hee

Surnames and identity

"Your name is the most important word to your ears
- change it for someone else's and you disappear from your own history. "

• Do you own your name or does your name own you?
• How do you feel about your own surname (or personal name) ?
• To what extent, is it part of your identity?
  If not, then why do so few people change their surname (except on marriage), given that names have no legal status?

Have you ever met anyone with exactly the same combination of forename and surname?
How did you react? How did you feel? Or how might you think you would react?

• Do males and females have different attitudes to their surnames?
  Girls know they could be expected to change them on marriage, boys not.
  Do men attach more significance to a surname?

Under what circumstances may an involuntary name-change occur? :-

• Marriage
• Divorce
• Acquired step-parents
• Self-protection
• Subterfuge (Spying, Con-man)
• Entertainment
• Assimilation into another culture

Any others?

These are individual name-changes, but there have been mass changes

• In Finland in 1906, approximately 100,000 non-Finnish surnames were finnicised (Swedish had been the official language)
• Mass-naming of emancipated slaves in USA
• Adoption of the clan surname in Scotland

Examples of name-shifts

Cultural shifts
-Feminism and Surnames

The above contrasting quotes suggest that the situation has eased, in the last 30 years?
Would you agree this is so?
If you consider yourself a feminist, what pressures do you think might still be exerted -overtly or covertly-on you not to keep your name on marriage? By yourself as much as by others

Here are some that have been suggested

Practical
-Difficulty of persuading others that you are indeed married if retain name : constantly having to correct strangers who make assumptions
-Coping with disappointment of parents or parents-in-law; especially if children are involved

Emotional
-Taking husband's surname is seen as an overt commitment to the relationship. It emotionally signals a transition, a new beginning in your life (But then does not this also apply to the husband? He could show his commitment by changing his name instead)
-You may have had a bad relationship with your father, and wish to discard his name
-Pride in the ethnic or racial tradition in your name, or alternatively a desired to move away from that tradition

Aesthetic
- You prefer the sound of your husband's name
- Others find your name hard to spell or awkward to pronounce

Case studies

In a recent US study (Social Science Journal, 2002), it was indicated that 5% of American married women have retained their birth name, and that 25% have hyphenated it to their husbands. America also has a high rate of divorces and re-marriages. It is not uncommon to find families of mingled surnames, in which a parent's name might differ from their offspring. School authorities cope with this potential source of confusion by addressing communications to " the parents of...."

But in a society without the formal Mr. and Mrs, how do you address your friends' parents or step-parents in a family of mixed surnames?
Some adults accept being called by their forenames - perhaps they feel the forced informality will break down barriers. For others, the novelty soon palls

-Surnames in working life- examples of a cultural shift in the 20th century

Which of these two outlooks are you more at ease with?

Role playing:

You have just got engaged. What arguments would you use to persuade your partner that you should

• keep your maiden name on marriage
• that your partner should change their name on marriage
  (Maybe the boys should be set the challenge of finding arguments for maiden-name retention)

What compromise solutions have people found

• hyphenation of the two names (but whose name will come first?)
• by combining elements from each name to form a new surname e.g. if John Daniels married
  Britney Pilger, their combined name could be Danger or Piliels.
• different names for different environments. Maiden name for work, but married name otherwise

Creating a double-barrelled surname is less usual in the UK. The reason? People are more class-conscious and feel it smacks of pretentiousness. Plus they feel that if any future offspring inherit their newly created double-barrelled surnames, those children would be teased mercilessly at school. What do you think?

Hyphenated names are not a recent phenomenon. This is a list of the most commonly hyphenated names in England and Wales. The frequencies are not great (ranging from 1,000 to 200) : but enough to suggest that these names have become hereditary.

Welsh names predominate - especially Jones- with a smattering of Arabic names. Explanations?

The order of double-barrelled names may be affected by phonological rules. The element which comes last probably will end with a vowel or have a long last vowel (as in Jones). The element which is placed first is likely to have an initial consonant cluster and be monosyllabic. The same rules seem to apply to forenames. Try out some combinations of names with the above elements, and see which order sounds right to your ears

Afterword

"What I feel is important is that women have choices (my mother never did) and these choices can be about shaping one's own identity along a number of different axes. There was no-one more surprised [than] my husband when I made my decision [to take his name] and I quite like the idea that feminists can surprise, rather than do the predictable thing" quote to S Mills 2003

Has the various feminist campaigns had an effect on surname choice amongst the female population at large? Would your class feel this was an issue, today? Would answers vary according to culture -ethnic or social aspiration or regional influences.

Or maybe the influence of celebrity culture? Some feminist star celebrities have made the conscious choice not to retain their celebrity surname on marriage.

Those in same-sex relationships, often decide "to change their surnames on coming out as a mark that they are no longer tied to the names of their fathers" ; which names are regarded as symbolic of a patriarchal and heterosexist society.

In America, the Lucy Stone League campaigns to promote the awareness to retain one's name. Lucy Stone was an early feminist and suffragette who in 1855 commenced a campaign- with the support of her husband- to retain her maiden name. Her wedding day manifesto is of some interest.

I am indebted to Sara Mills -Sheffield Hallam University- whose recent survey of feminist academics has informed much of this section

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Investigating you own surname

-Distribution and statistics

Surname Profiler
This online database (the result of an academic research funding bid) plots the distribution of some 50,000 (?) names in 1998 onto postcode areas : also the 1881 distribution against the same area (should postcode areas have existed then. The cut-off frequency is 100. The accompanying statistics need to be treated with caution - how they were compiled needs to be understood. The classification given to individual names does not necessarily conform to accepted practice

Surname Atlas
A purchasable CD which plots the distribution of all names(surnames and forenames) in the 1881 census to a finer degree. Full tables of accompanying statistics

-Meaning/Origin

For UK names consult the following Surname Dictionaries (but treat the definitions as suggestions, rather than prescriptive):-

• Cottle, Basil 'The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames'. Penguin, 1967
• Dunkling, Leslie 'Dictionary of Surnames' Collins, 1998
  -(Includes recent arrivals such as Patel)
• Hanks Patrick. A dictionary of surnames Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988
  -(has a useful introduction on the naming systems of Western Europe)
• Reaney , P.H. A dictionary of British surnames .
  -Revised 3rd edition ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997

For European names -Hanks,or surname dictionaries for individual countries or ethnic groups
Dictionaries of Chinese family names, Jewish names are available. Arab name dictionaries will just concern themselves with personal names.

• Use the resources on my site to determine where in the UK the name is most concentrated.
• Does this square with your family history?
• Is your surname listed? What percentage of class-names are not?
• Can the definitions be assigned to an overlying classification scheme (probably European names only)
  (suggested link)
• What is the origin of your teacher's name
• It is estimated that 3% of surnames are animal names (source: N Jacobs 'Naming-day in Eden') e.g. Michael Fox the film-actor, can you name any more?

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Investigating surname distribution and frequency

-The macro-scale

The distribution of the leading British surnames in 1881

SMITH	JONES	WILLIAMS
TAYLOR	BROWN	DAVIES
EVANS	THOMAS	WILSON

maps created with Surname Atlas © archersoftware

These maps illustrate the fact that even leading names are not evenly distributed. Each has its own signature. These individual distribution patterns are detectable, even in the 21st century

• Place these names into categoraries i.e. Patronymics, Occupational, Locatives, Topographicals, Nicknames. The main categorary -in this instance Patronymic-, can be subdivided into Genitival (Jones, Williams, Evans, Davies) or straight (Thomas)
• How many of these names are of Welsh origin?
• Why do Welsh names predominate ? Consider also the relative population sizes of England and Wales. Compare with leading Scotiish and Irish names
• What percentage of the top 9 names are Welsh? (For the late 20th century, about 50% by number of bearers) - a living example of the contribution of Wales to the socio-cultural complex that is Britain

• The overall frequency curve for all names begins to flatten out into a very long tail. The UK as a whole has very,very many names with only a few bearers. Typically, these rare names are locative

The graph starts near the 0; 0 point, rapidly rises to about 90; 10 and then slowly rises to 100; 100.
It is difficult to understand what is going on in this graphic presentation, as all the activity seems to take place for low values of “Percentage of surnames”.

Re-displaying the data on a semi-logarithmic scale is more revealing

graph © Ken Tucker, Carleton University

Now, one can see that the most popular 1% of all names, accommodate over 70% of the population, and that 90% of the surnames, from 10% to 100% -the rare surname types- accommodate a mere 9% of the population. The distribution of surnames is thus highly skewed.
[Actually, the above 2 graphs are for contemporary US names (thanks, Ken) - but the slopes would be very similar for the UK. Canadian surnames are similar: suggesting that the shape of the curve is not peculiar to the USA but is intrinsic to at least English language surname distributions -source Ken Tucker]

• For England and Wales, the top 300 surnames encompass 36% of the population of England and Wales
  (and if E/W has 0.5 million surnames? then, the top 500 (as 1% of names) surnames should then cover 70% of the population)
• An analysis of the NHS Central Register (England and Wales) found that 965 surnames covered about 50% of the population of England/Wales/IOM, with the following frequency distribution

population surnames 10% 24 20% 84 30% 213 40% 460 50% 954 60% 1,908 70% 3,912 80% 10,214 90% 100,000 100% 1,071,603

• Notice the long tail that forms after the 1,000^th surname. Whereas the first 10% of the population covers 24 names, the last 10% contains 90,000.
• this is not to say that there are 1 million names in England and Wales. The NHS Central Registry was not built for this purpose, and is subject to list inflation. Besides the national population is in constant flux- new names arriving (or being created through hyphenation), rare names disappearing through emigration or on death. One can never give a definitive figure; merely an indication. To be very cautious, I would see that it is merely indicative that the size of the surname pool is probably in the range of 0.75-1.25 million names. Although a recent unpublished study would suggest a lower range.

• Cumulative frequencies for Scotland, from 3 historic surveys

Surnames prefixed with "Mac" or "Mc" were counted as one

• For the Victorian sample, the top 50 names accounted for 29.65% of the sample
• For, 1935 - 26% of the sample
• For 1958 - 25.53% of the sample
• Point to note- the Victorian sample size was less than a quarter of the later surveys

• For the UK, the top 100 surnames cover 20% of the population
• This is an exercise that can be repeated from the ranking of top names on this site, and from the names on the GRO(S) site

• For any large database of surnames, the frequency/ranking complies with Zipf's law i.e. there is a direct relationship between the raw figure and the rank
• If the data is plotted on a log-log scale, then the result conforms to a straight-line that represents a power-law.
  (For more see Statistics section)

-National surname signatures

The data can be expressed in other ways. For example, the next table is an extract from data laid out from the 1881 UK census (I took the data from the Surname Atlas CD).

The Viking long-boat
You will notice that early on, some names (e,g, Smith, Brown, Williams) are the sole occupants of a frequency. If you then plot column C (the number of names) against column A (the frequency), then the result is as follows

The effect has been termed reminiscent of the prow of a Viking longboat

Where do you think your name would fall on this graph?

-Occupied Frequencies

There are problems with the above .

• The mistranscriptions are plotted (and as many are unique) will provide significant initial 'noise'
• Most frequencies are unoccupied by names- probably about between only 1 to 4 per cent of the possible range actually is. For example, look at the large number of unoccupied frequencies between Smith and Jones.

The following method overcomes these limitations:-
The occupied frequencies are ranked - rather than the names themselves. Rank 1 of the occupied frequencies is taken just by the surname 'Smith' with a population of 422,733.

The rank is then plotted against the 'population of names at the occupied frequency' (column D above)

At a certain ranking, that frequency will suddenly be occupied by 2 surnames : the initial point of the 2nd strata is then plotted. The process continues till all the ranks of occupied frequencies are exhausted.

In the graph below, the bottom strata represents all those frequencies that are occupied just by a single name.

1881 census	1998 Electoral Roll
leading.....................................................................rare	leading.....................................................................rare
y axis = frequency population	y axis = frequency population
'Rank' of the Occupied Frequency	'Rank' of the Occupied Frequency

Notes

• The advantage of this method is that all surname positions can be plotted
• The shapes are re-assuringly similar in shape
• The shape exhibits strata which represent single-occupancy, double occcupancy, triple etc
• The data is not quite like for like- as the UK electoral roll excludes those aged 1-16, and some sections of the poplation are under-registered

Features

• Two maxima, each at the end of the x-range. The left-hand maximum of a single strata represents leading names (Smith, Brown etc). The right-hand maximum of a diminishing tail represents all the low-occuring rare surnames
• A minimum which is the lowest single-occupancy frequency
• The overall shape is bounded
• For an increase of size of the distribution, the number of occuped frequencies increases and the minimum value drifts up, or as Ken has succinctly said "the bigger the boat, the higher it floats"

Comparisons

• The 1998 graph has 'floated up' as expected because of population increase
• The difference between the two maxima has lessened in a hundred+ years. The opposite might have been expected, Since the 1881 census data contains mis-transcriptions, and since the spelling of surnames has become less idiosyncratic in the interim, one might have expected the tail to have shrunk. Can you suggest reasons why it might not have? The number of single international students in universities? Single migrant workers (whether Polish bus drivers or Icelandic bankers or Russian football club owners. ö)

International comparisons

This graph acts as a fingerprint to compare the surname profiles of different nations. For example, a fingerprint of contempary Canadian surnames shows the reverse of its UK and USA fingerprints, in that the maximum 'Tail' is higher than the beginning maximum. In this case, it can be said that the Canadian bearers of surname Smith are rarer than all the holders of a unique surname

Investigating surnames

-The micro-scale

Small-group surname statistics

• Take a listing of all those in your year.
• Count the number of occurrences of each name.
• Compare with the most listed names in your sample with e.g. Smith, Jones, Williams, Patel
  (UK national frequencies.) (USA national frequencies)

• How many names only appear once? What percentage is this of the total?
• Are singletons the largest group?

• Repeat this exercise with an electoral roll extract- maybe a couple of streets around where you live.
• Are the results comparable with the school-roll exercise?

• Count the number of syllables in each name. Does any number of syllables predominate?

Syllable-length of UK's top 100 surnames
Source: personal count

• Does the number of syllables in your sample differ from the above pie chart?
  (For more on linguistics and names see Variance: Appendix 2)

Surname length

• A 1968 sample survey of the surnames in the London Telephone directory found that the average length was 6.47. A later survey of a large hospital patient file had similar result (6.38) as indeed did a recent survey (Jan 2004)of a large sample from the 1881 census

  Number of letters	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15+
  Frequency	0.1	1.4	10.1	19.1	24.7	20.3	22.3	6.8	2.7	1.3	0.7	0.2	0.2	0.1
  source: M Healey 'The lengths of surnames' Journal of the Royal Statistical Society-A (1968)

• The above sample included hyphenated names
• How does the frequency distribution compare with your modern-day classlist?
• Do the letters 5-8 still account for at least 85% of your list
• Are there more longer names (13+ letters) reflecting the growth of hyphenated names given to children?

Initial letters of surnames:-

• An analysis of the electoral register for 1957-8

• England- B is the most common initial letter (11%)
• Wales - J is the most frequent (11%) - and noticeably higher in rural Wales
• Scotland - the initial letter M accounts for 21% of the surnames (and within the crofting counties, the proportion rises to almost 40%
• Compare you list with the above table : (but with the proviso that a national snapshot today would probably be subtly different )

• The above plot of each initial letter reveals interesting peaks and troughs.

• Are some initial letters more conducive to names because they can form consonant clusters for strong syllables?

• or perhaps because those initial letters are rich in suffixes, or because they mimic the pattern of initial letters of given names?

As a further analysis, the individual figures have been separated and ranked in decreasing order

The graphs for England and Wales do seem to be reminiscent of a power-law relationship (?) - though not for Scotland

Initial Letters forming 50% of surnames

Probably, at a sub-national level, these patterns are not sustainable. But I am intrigued as to why they exist, and are identifiable in analyses 50 years earlier. None of the frequencies bear any relationship to the general frequencies of initial letters in the English Language, and for England, in particular, the letter B is not a predominantly fertile source of given names.

Contemporary Spelling

Have you noticed how the spelling of surnames differs from the noun it derives from?
For example, Taylor rather than Tailor.
Spelling variation seems to be tolerated rather than forbidden, in the case of surnames.
For more on this topic

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Case study: Investigating a yearlist

generated with xls2html converter

Just a rather boring list of names : the A Level candidates in a particular school at a particular date.
But can you guess the place or the time? Surely you cannot derive such information merely from a list?

Analysis

• This is a school-list- so the teenager's families are likely to be fairly settled.
• There are only 39 names; is this enough?
• The list lacks any sense of cosmopolitan-ness - so it is either from a deeply rural area, or maybe 30+ years ago
• There are 2 Smiths and 2 Jones one would normally only expect 1 per 100 names. Unless they are twins or cousins, this could reflect the fact that these leading names are more numerous here. Leading names are not evenly spread. They do vary in areas of strength.
• Including Jones, 8 names associated with Wales spring out
• But there are 5 names ending in 'son' (i.e. forename+ son). These type of names (patronymics) are traditionally associated with the North of England.[ excluding 'Parsons' which is an occupational-originated surname
• A first guess might be somewhere between- Manchester? But Lancashire is an area of locative surnames, and one would expect names like Duckworth, Entwistle,Fairclough, Waring etc
• In order to proceed further, it is essential to know the historic strength of the remaining names
• The following regional strengths were compiled from Surname Atlas

• There are as many surnames associated with the Midlands, as from Wales. Together a total of 16 out of 39. The strong Welsh element points to the West rather than the East Midlands.
• Some names have ramified in a small area, and the majority of its bearers have stayed within a tight area. These may be regarded as 'marker' names. There is 1 marker name in the above list that probably locates this example within a radius of 10 miles. Can you hazard a guess as to both marker and location ? Answers at the end of this section.
• Your area may now have new 'marker' names that will define your cultural landscape, as well as traditional marker names. Can you identify either in your own year-list?

New 'Marker' names

The results of the 2001 census identify the following groups as being most strongest represented in the following areas. Presumably, these areas now have new names that typify them, mingling with traditional names.

Can you identify other groups, areas, marker names that might be represented in your year?

Drawback

The above analysis of the year-list example is subjective. I know the answer, so am I manipulating the data to derive the answer I want? If I had taken the previous or subsequent year, would the answer have been different or ambiguous? Try this yourself.

Answers to Quiz
Marker name = Whitehouse
Location= Wolverhampton

Whitehouse 1881 distribution - revealing its concentration in the West Midlands

***If the spatial analysis of surnames interests you, then I have included a brief introduction to possible geographical techniques elsewhere on this site***

Studying New Surnames