Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
First/given/forename, middle, and last/family/surname with John Fitzgerald Kennedy as example. This shows a structure typical for Anglophonic cultures (and some others). Other cultures use other structures for full names. A surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family.
Pages in category "English-language surnames" The following 200 pages are in this category, out of approximately 3,354 total. This list may not reflect recent changes .
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]
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 ...
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 ...
Several surnames have multiple spellings; this is sometimes due to unrelated families bearing the same surname. A single surname in either language may have multiple translations in the other. In some English translations of the names, the M(a)c- prefix may be omitted in the English, e.g. Bain vs MacBain, Cowan vs MacCowan, Ritchie vs MacRitchie.
The Office of Vital Records in California requires that names contain only the 26 alphabetical characters of the English language, plus hyphens and apostrophes. [8] Some states (for example, Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, North Carolina, Oregon) allow diacritics and some non-English letters in birth certificates and other documents.