Personal name

Common components of names given at birth include:

• Personal name: The given name (or acquired name in some cultures) can precede a family name (as in most European cultures), or it can come after the family name (as in some East Asian cultures and Hungary), or be used without a family name.
• Patronymic: A surname based on the given name of the father.
• Matronymic: A surname based on the given name of the mother.
• Family name: A name used by all members of a family. In China, surnames gradually came into common use beginning in the 3rd century BC (having been common only among the nobility before that). In some areas of East Asia (e.g. Vietnam and Korea), surnames developed in the next several centuries, while in other areas (like Japan), surnames did not become prevalent until the 19th century. In Europe, after the loss of the Roman system, the common use of family names started quite early in some areas (France in the 13th century, and Germany in the 16th century), but it often did not happen until much later in areas that used a patronymic naming custom, such as the Scandinavian countries, Wales, and some areas of Germany, as well as Russia and Ukraine. The compulsory use of surnames varied greatly. France required a priest to write surnames in baptismal records in 1539 (but did not require surnames for Jews, who usually used patronymics, until 1808). On the other hand, surnames were not compulsory in the Scandinavian countries until the 19th or 20th century (1923 in Norway), and Iceland still does not use surnames for its native inhabitants. In most of the cultures of the Middle East and South Asia, surnames were not generally used until European influence took hold in the 19th century.

In Spain and most Latin American countries, two surnames are used, one being the father's family name and the other being the mother's family name. In Spain, though, the second surname is frequently used if the first one is too common to allow an easy identification. For example, Former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is often called Zapatero. In Argentina, only the father's last name is used, in most cases.

In Portugal, Brazil and most other Portuguese-speaking countries, at least two surnames are used, often three or four, typically some or none inherited from the mother and some or all inherited from the father, in that order. Co-parental siblings most often share an identical string of surnames. For collation, shortening, and formal addressing, the last of these surnames is typically preferred. A Portuguese person named António de Oliveira Guterres would therefore be known commonly as António Guterres.

In Russia, the first name and family name conform to the usual Western practice, but the middle name is patronymic. Thus, all the children of Ivan Volkov would be named "[first name] Ivanovich Volkov" if male, or "[first name] Ivanovna Volkova" if female (-ovich meaning "son of", -ovna meaning "daughter of",[8] and -a usually being appended to the surnames of girls). However, in formal Russian name order, the surname comes first, followed by the given name and patronymic, such as "Raskolnikov Rodion Romanovich".[9]

In many families, single or multiple middle names are simply alternative names, names honoring an ancestor or relative, or, for married women, sometimes their maiden names. In some traditions, however, the roles of the first and middle given names are reversed, with the first given name being used to honor a family member and the middle name being used as the usual method to address someone informally. Many Catholic families choose a saint's name as their child's middle name or this can be left until the child's confirmation when they choose a saint's name for themselves. Cultures that use patronymics or matronymics will often give middle names to distinguish between two similarly named people: e.g., Einar Karl Stefánsson and Einar Guðmundur Stefánsson. This is especially done in Iceland (as shown in example) where people are known and referred to almost exclusively by their given name/s.

Some people (called anonyms) choose to be anonymous, that is, to hide their true names, for fear of governmental prosecution or social ridicule of their works or actions. Another method to disguise one's identity is to employ a pseudonym.

For some people, their name is a single word, known as a mononym. This can be true from birth, or occur later in life. For example, Teller, of the magician duo Penn and Teller, was named Raymond Joseph Teller at birth, but changed his name both legally and socially to be simply "Teller". In some official government documents, such as his driver's license, his given name is listed as NFN, an initialism for "no first name".

The Inuit believe that the souls of the namesakes are one, so they traditionally refer to the junior namesakes, not just by the names (atiq), but also by kinship title, which applies across gender and generation without implications of disrespect or seniority.

In Judaism, someone's name is considered intimately connected with their fate, and adding a name (e.g. on the sickbed) may avert a particular danger. Among Ashkenazi Jews it is also considered bad luck to take the name of a living ancestor, as the Angel of Death may mistake the younger person for their namesake (although there is no such custom among Sephardi Jews). Jews may also have a Jewish name for intra-community use and use a different name when engaging with the Gentile world.

Chinese children are called diminutive or pejorative names to make them appear worthless to evil spirits. They receive a definitive name as they grow up. Chinese and Japanese emperors receive posthumous names.

In some Polynesian cultures, the name of a deceased chief becomes taboo. If he is named after a common object or concept, a different word has to be used for it.

Depending on national convention, additional given names (and sometimes titles) are considered part of the name.

The royalty, nobility, and gentry of Europe traditionally have many names, including phrases for the lands that they own. The French developed the method of putting the term by which the person is referred in small capital letters. It is this habit which transferred to names of Eastern Asia, as seen below. An example is that of Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch Gilbert du Motier, who is known as the Marquis de Lafayette. Note that he possessed both the lands of Motier and Lafayette.

The bare place name was used formerly to refer to the person who owned it, rather than the land itself (the word "Gloucester" in "What will Gloucester do?" meant the Duke of Gloucester). As a development, the bare name of a ship in the Royal Navy meant its captain (e.g., "Cressy didn't learn from Aboukir") while the name with an article referred to the ship (e.g., "The Cressy is foundering").

A personal naming system, or anthroponymic system, is a system describing the choice of personal name in a certain society. Personal names consists of one or more parts, such as given name, surname and patronymic. Personal naming systems are studied within the field of anthroponymy.

In contemporary Western societies (except for Iceland, Hungary, and sometimes Flanders, depending on the occasion), the most common naming convention is that a person must have a given name, which is usually gender-specific, followed by the parents' family name. In onomastic terminology, given names of male persons are called andronyms (from Ancient Greek ἀνήρ / man, and ὄνομα / name),[10] while given names of female persons are called gynonyms (from Ancient Greek γυνή / woman, and ὄνομα / name).[11]

Some given names are bespoke, but most are repeated from earlier generations in the same culture. Many are drawn from mythology, some of which span multiple language areas. This has resulted in related names in different languages (e.g. George, Georg, Jorge), which might be translated or might be maintained as immutable proper nouns.

In earlier times, Scandinavian countries followed patronymic naming, with people effectively called "X's son/daughter"; this is now the case only in Iceland and was recently re-introduced as an option in the Faroe Islands. It is legally possible in Finland as people of Icelandic ethnic naming are specifically named in the name law. When people of this name convert to standards of other cultures, the phrase is often condensed into one word, creating last names like Jacobsen (Jacob's Son).

In Kafirstan (now part of Afghanistan) "Children are named as soon as born. The infant is given to the mother to suckle, while a wise woman rapidly recites the family ancestral names; the name pronounced at the instant the baby begins to feed is that by which it is thereafter known."[12]

There is a range of personal naming systems:[13]

• Binomial systems: apart from their given name, people are described by their surnames, which they obtain from one of their parents. Most modern European personal naming systems are of this type.
• Patronymic systems: apart from their given name, people are described by their patronymics, that is given names (not surnames) of parents or other ancestors. Such systems were in wide use throughout Europe in the first millennium CE, but were replaced by binomial systems. The Icelandic system is still patronymic.
• More complex systems like Arabic system, consisting of paedonymic (son's name), given name, patronymic and one or two bynames.

Different cultures have different conventions for personal names. This is a list of articles about particular cultures' naming conventions.

Apart from the Linnaean taxonomy, some humans give individual non-human animals and plants names, usually of endearment.

In onomastic classification, names of individual animals are called zoonyms,[23] while names of individual plants are called phytonyms.[24]

• Matthews, Elaine; Hornblower, Simon; Fraser, Peter Marshall, Greek Personal Names: Their Value as Evidence, Proceedings of the British Academy (104), Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-726216-3

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Name".

• Varying use of first and family names in different countries and cultures
• Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
• Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, contains over 35,000 published Greek names.