Personal name
A personal name, full name or prosoponym is the set of names by which an individual person or animal is known. When taken together as a phrase, they all relate to that one individual. In many cultures, the term is synonymous with the birth name or legal name of the individual. In linguistic classification, personal names are studied within a specific onomastic discipline, called anthroponymy.
In Western culture, nearly all individuals possess at least one given name, together with a surname. 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 names, typically only one is used in normal speech.
Another naming convention that is used mainly in the Arabic culture and in different other areas across Africa and Asia is connecting the person's given name with a chain of names, starting with the name of the person's father and then the father's father and so on, usually ending with the family name. However, the legal full name of a person usually contains the first three names and the family name at the end, to limit the name in government-issued ID. Men's names and women's names are constructed using the same convention, and a person's name is not altered if they are married.
Some cultures, including Western ones, also add patronymics or matronymics, for instance as a middle name as with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, or as a last name as with Björk Guðmundsdóttir or Heiðar Helguson. Similar concepts are present in Eastern cultures. However, in some areas of the world, many people are known by a single name, and so are said to be mononymous. Still other cultures lack the concept of specific, fixed names designating people, either individually or collectively. Certain isolated tribes, such as the Machiguenga of the Amazon, do not use personal names.
It is nearly universal for people to have names; the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child declares that a child has the right to a name from birth.
Structure in humans
Common components of names given at birth can include:- Personal name: The given name can precede a family name, or it can come after the family name, 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 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, the second surname is sometimes informally used alone 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 just Zapatero. In Argentina, only the father's last name is used, in most cases.
In most Portuguese-speaking countries typically two surnames are used, sometimes 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 Manuel 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 " Ivanovich Volkov" if male, or " Ivanovna Volkova" if female. However, in formal Russian name order, the surname comes first, followed by the given name and patronymic, such as "Raskolnikov Rodion Romanovich".
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 where people are known and referred to almost exclusively by their given name/s.
Some people 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, 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 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. Jews may also have a Jewish name for intra-community use and use a different name when engaging with the Gentile world.
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.
In Cameroon, there is "a great deal of mobility" within naming structure. Some Cameroonians, particularly Anglophone Cameroonians, use "a characteristic sequencing" starting with a first surname, followed by a forename then a second surname, while others begin with a forename followed by first and then second surnames. The latter structure is rare in Francophone Cameroon, however, where a third structure prevails: First surname, second surname, forename.
Depending on national convention, additional given names are considered part of the name.
Legal names
A person's personal name is usually their full legal name; however, some people use only part of their full legal name, a title, nickname, pseudonym or other chosen name that is different from their legal name, and reserve their legal name for legal and administrative purposes.Feudal names
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 La Fayette. He possessed both the lands of Motier and La Fayette.The bare place name was used formerly to refer to the person who owned it, rather than the land itself. As a development, the bare name of a ship in the Royal Navy meant its captain while the name with an article referred to the ship.
Naming conventions
A personal naming system, or anthroponymic system, is a system describing the choice of personal name in a certain society. Personal names consist 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, 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, while given names of female persons are called gynonyms.
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, 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.
There is a range of personal naming systems:
- 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 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, given name, patronymic and one or two bynames.