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Fitz – (Irish, from Norman French) "son of", from Latin " filius" meaning "son" (mistakenly thought to mean illegitimate son, because of its use for certain illegitimate sons of English kings) [citation needed] i – "and", always in lowercase, used to identify both surnames (e.g. Antoni Gaudí i Cornet) [11]
A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name [1] that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a family or clan) who have a common surname.
For example, in the case of the well-known statesman, V. K. Krishna Menon, his first name would be Krishna, the V stands for Vengyalil, which is a well known aristocratic Nair family from Kerala that Krishna's mother belonged to, the K stands for Krishnan, his father's name and the surname is Menon, one of the Nair subcastes. In modern times ...
In the name "James Smith", for example, James is the first name and Smith is the surname. Surnames in the West generally indicate that the individual belongs to a family, a tribe, or a clan, although the exact relationships vary: they may be given at birth, taken upon adoption, changed upon marriage, and so on. Where there are two or more given ...
When a person (traditionally the wife in many cultures) assumes the family name of their spouse, in some countries that name replaces the person's previous surname, which in the case of the wife is called the maiden name ("birth name" is also used as a gender-neutral or masculine substitute for maiden name), whereas a married name is a family name or surname adopted upon marriage.
Over the centuries, under the influence of post-Medieval English practice, this type of surname has become static over generations, handed down the male lineage to all successive generations so that it no longer indicates the given name of a holder's father any more than the suffix -son on a Germanic language surname does today. Among English ...
Examples of surnames are documented in the 11th century by the barons in England. English surnames began to be formed with reference to a certain aspect of that individual, such as their trade, father's name, location of birth, or physical features, and were not necessarily inherited.
Excluded are the numerous spellings which fail to make the pronunciation obvious without actually being at odds with convention: for example, the pronunciation / s k ə ˈ n ɛ k t ə d i / [1] [2] of Schenectady is not immediately obvious, but neither is it counterintuitive.