What family names/parts indicate national or cultural origin?

July 9, 2020 6:25 AM

What patterns are there in family names that usually indicate national, cultural, ethnic, or linguistic origin, like how names ending in "-ian" or "-yan" are usually Armenian, names ending in "-oinen" or "-ainen" are usually Finnish or Estonian, and names ending in "-escu" are usually Romanian?

I've noticed those patterns, and I know there are some exceptions (e.g., "Subramanian" is Indian, not Armenian), but the patterns I mentioned are usually pretty accurate.

I'm interested in more patterns like that, or other things one can learn from name patterns. I'm not so much looking for specific examples (e.g., "Park" is often Korean or "Cooper" made barrels) as rules about suffixes, prefixes, sounds, etc.

posted by likedoomsday to Writing & Language (42 answers total)

This Wikipedia List of family name affixes might answer your question?
posted by EndsOfInvention at 6:28 AM on July 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

Not even sure where to start with Japanese names. Well, maybe start here. Most common Japanese didn't adopt family names until the late 19th century (read the article; it's complicated).
posted by SPrintF at 6:34 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

O'Surname will be Irish, Mac and Mc can be Scottish or Irish. Then there's the nobiliary particle, mostly indicating origin as well as status.
posted by carbide at 6:37 AM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Van, Van Der, Van De, Van Den: these prefixes originate in Dutch. They mean "From [the]" or "Of [the]".
-szoon, szen, -ssen: these endings originate in Dutch, too, and mean "-'s son".
posted by Too-Ticky at 6:43 AM on July 9, 2020

Names ending in stra are often Dutch, specifically Friesen.
posted by jennstra at 6:43 AM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

About 90% of surnames in Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia/Herzegovina end in -ic. When you encounter that suffix, think southern slavs in the Balkan Peninsula

In Scandinavia, surnames ending in

-sen = Norwegian or Danish roots
–sson = Swedish or Icelandic roots

(Finnish is a completely different language)
posted by BadgerDoctor at 6:51 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Various Nordic countries that use patronymic names (where your last name isn't a family name but rather a reference to you being tho son or daughter of your father) can be recognized by -sson, -ssen, -datter, -dottir, etc.
posted by kindall at 6:52 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

-as, -is, and-us endings can be Lithuanian. However, a lot of those are gendered (-e is the feminine). For one of my family names, the endings were dropped entirely in the US.
posted by FencingGal at 7:02 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

First Nations names in Canada tend to be English using nouns of animals (usually the clan ones), or nature, as well as appendages like “Big” or “Small”, although I am seeing a lot of women adopting Kwe into their family name. I assume names that end in -oo, -uk/ook, -aaq/aq, -ik etc are Inuit people (who received family names under the 1970 “Project Surname” that replaced the disk numbers assigned to each Inuk).
posted by saucysault at 7:03 AM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Dutch heritage can also be inferred from a lot of -ma or -ga endings (Huizenga, Postema, Lynema, Rietema) or similarly to Van, with Den De or Ten as a kind of prefix that means "the" (DeBoer, DeVisser, TenBrink, DenBeste).

-(d)ez endings are commonly Spanish, usually added onto a typical first name, which might indicate patrimony (Gonzalo -> Gonzalez; Fernando -> Fernandez; etc).
posted by LionIndex at 7:06 AM on July 9, 2020

-ov is a pretty common Russian surname ending.

Slate had this list of Ashkenazi Jewish names, from which you can draw patterns.

Names with z and another consonant (e.g., cz or dz) usually indicate Polish origin. Contrary to popular belief, there is logic to the pronunciation.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:06 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

The patronymic naming convention mentioned by kindall is now only in use in Iceland, no longer Sweden, Norway or Denmark.
posted by Balthamos at 7:08 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

There are a whole lot of Mexican/Mexican-American names that end in -ez: Martinez, Gomez, Perez, Gonzalez, Jimenez, etc. You will also find a lot of family names starting with De La ("of the"): de la Garza (of the crane), de la Cruz (of the cross).
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:10 AM on July 9, 2020

A selection of Georgian surname suffixes from wikipedia

For Spanish, you can find conjunctions, suffixes, nicknames, place names, how to name children whose parents are unknown (aka foundlings), and other conventions on wikipedia. This link also gets into distinguishing Basque, Catalan, and other languages in Spain.

-ov is a Russian last name ending for men. For women it is -ova. in fact, most last names change for women and girls. Last names ending in y become -aya. For a listing of Slavic naming customs, see this wikipedia article.
posted by bilabial at 7:11 AM on July 9, 2020

Also note, last names in Russian come from lots and lots of places and/or are associated with other places, for instance Asia and Scandanavia. Some "Russian" last name endings are so common in other cultures that they are not reliable indicators.
posted by bilabial at 7:15 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

-enko tends to be Ukranian.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 7:43 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

There's a lot of overlap between Ashkenazi Jewish last names and German and Polish ones, so it's tricky to get a true correlation, though variations on Cohen / Coen / Cohn / Kahan / Kahn, and Levine / Levi / Levy / Levinson / Loewy / Halevi are generally Jewish in origin.

For Sephardic Jews, look for Ben ____ and Bar ____ and occasionally Bat ____ .
posted by Mchelly at 7:49 AM on July 9, 2020

here are a whole lot of Mexican/Mexican-American names that end in -ez: Martinez, Gomez, Perez, Gonzalez, Jimenez, etc. You will also find a lot of family names starting with De La ("of the"): de la Garza (of the crane), de la Cruz (of the cross).

Similarly names like Fernandes, Gomes etc indicate Portuguese (or Galician origin)
posted by vacapinta at 8:03 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

-as, -is, and-us endings can be Lithuanian. However, a lot of those are gendered (-e is the feminine). For one of my family names, the endings were dropped entirely in the US.

To my American ear, Lithuanian last names are really distinctive. If it ends with "aitis" or "auskas" or "icius" it's probably a Lithuanian name.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:09 AM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Many French surnames start with “de” (“of”) or “des” or “de la” or “du” ( “of the”).

These names have often been contracted to a single word: Decamps, Delattre, Delacrois, Delavigne, Desjardins, Desportes, Dubois, Dubuisson.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:13 AM on July 9, 2020

Oh, and French names also frequently start with “le” or “la” (“the”), again contracted to a single word: Lagrange, Larousse, LaRue, Lemoine, Leprince, Leroux.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:18 AM on July 9, 2020

Many French surnames start with “de” (“of”)

And "de" can also be a marker for a Dutch / Flemish surname. De Jong, De Lange, De Vos, De Vries etc.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:37 AM on July 9, 2020

Some patterns show up in surnames derived from place names.

Names ending in -ford (like Radford, Redford, Weatherford) or -ton (like Milton or Hamilton) mostly come from British places names (“-ton” for a town; “ford” for a river crossing). Other British toponym suffixes include -field and -bridge.

Scandinavian surnames may end in -gaard or -gård (farm), -berg or -borg (mountain), -dahl or -dal (valley).

German toponymic endings include -beck or -bach (stream), -berg or -burg (mountain), and -holtz (wood).

Another common name ending in German is -mann, often for names that come from professions. For example Zimmermann (carpenter), from “zimmer” (timber) and “mann” (man).
posted by mbrubeck at 8:43 AM on July 9, 2020

I have a (married) surname which starts with ‘le’ but is *not* French. People assume it is French aaaallllll the time. In fact, one of my recent homeschooling lessons with my soon to be kindergartener was basically ‘here are some wrong ways people might try to say your name and here is how to actually say it.’
posted by ficbot at 8:53 AM on July 9, 2020

-ski is often of Polish descent.

But yes, all of these are detailed in the link provided by EndsOfInvention.
posted by hydra77 at 9:15 AM on July 9, 2020

-as, -is, and-us endings can be Lithuanian. However, a lot of those are gendered (-e is the feminine). For one of my family names, the endings were dropped entirely in the US.

-as and -is can also be Greek, along with -os.
posted by each day we work at 9:54 AM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

ManyLeggedCreature: "de" can also be a marker for a Dutch / Flemish surname. De Jong, De Lange, De Vos, De Vries etc.

That's right, and in that case it means "the".
posted by Too-Ticky at 10:22 AM on July 9, 2020

And "de" can also be a marker for a Dutch / Flemish surname. De Jong, De Lange, De Vos, De Vries etc.

Which, due to US software having been (and often still being) unable to deal with surnames that consist of multiple words, had their space(s) excised when people emigrated to the US, becoming VanDerVelde or DeBoer. Germanic (Von der Leyen) and Iberian (Da Silva) surnames suffered likewise.

Surnames ending in "-ing" or "-ink", occasionally preceded by "Olde" or "Grote/Grosse", tend to indicate Lower Saxonian heritage.
posted by Stoneshop at 10:30 AM on July 9, 2020

-ow is of Russian origin, but applies predominantly to German surnames. My German history professor in college said it specifically applies to people living east of the Oder river
posted by oozy rat in a sanitary zoo at 10:47 AM on July 9, 2020

“Sherpa” (identifies the Sherpa people).
posted by Seeking Direction at 11:01 AM on July 9, 2020

-ino is usually Italian (means "little")
posted by fingersandtoes at 11:03 AM on July 9, 2020

Fitz- is English. I always thought it meant "bastard son of" but maybe it just means "son of."
posted by fingersandtoes at 11:07 AM on July 9, 2020

There are also British surnames ending in -ing.
posted by gudrun at 11:24 AM on July 9, 2020

I didn't mean to imply by my earlier comment that most Nordic countries still actually used patronyms, just that many of their surnames started out that way and you can recognize them by the patronymic suffixes. Iceland is indeed alone in still widely using actual patronymic last names.

If you are sufficiently discerning, you can recognize -nen as likely Finnish, -sen as likely Danish, -sson as Swedish, and -ssen as Norwegian. It does get a little tricky since Rasmussen is a common Danish last name but looks Norwegian because the -sen suffix is on Rasmus, which already ends with an "s," so it looks like -ssen. But considering these names generally Nordic or Scandinavian is pretty accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_family_name_etymology
posted by kindall at 12:00 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

British colonialists introduced patronymic last names in Cyprus and as first names are passed on through the generations it's very common to have the same(-ish) first and last name. Traditionally, children are named after their grandparents. Among Greek speakers in Cyprus (which I can talk about), most last names have a root which is the name of your ancestor + a suffix meaning "belonging to". Those tend to end in -ides/-ades/-dou/-di or /-ou/-es Some last names denote place of birth or occupation and they tend to end in /-as/-is/-ou/-os. There's also the prefix hadji- which Christian Orthodox Greek-speaking Cypriots would add to their last name after completing a pilgrimage in Jerusalem. As proper nouns, these names follow the grammatical rules of gender and case so it's hard to elaborate on patterns and rules without delving more deeply into the grammar.
posted by mkdirusername at 12:45 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

There used to be a joke in NYC that if it ended in a vowel, it was Italian - except for Shapiro. This isn’t 100% accurate, but it’s definitely a pattern.
posted by MexicanYenta at 5:28 PM on July 9, 2020

-shvili tens to be Georgian
posted by Pantalaimon at 5:37 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Cornish names all start with Pol and Tre and Pen.
posted by LizardBreath at 5:42 PM on July 9, 2020

The transliteration of names into non-native writing systems can sometimes give you clues to family history. There have been many systems developed to transcribe Chinese into the Latin alphabet and the same name will be transcribed very differently depending on the dialect, geographic region, and/or time period the Romanized name originated from.

For example, the name 蔡 can be spelled out as:
Cai - Mandarin, Pinyin - used in mainland China after the 1950s
Tsai - Mandarin, Wade-Giles - China before Pinyin, afterwards mostly Taiwan
Choi - Cantonese, Yale - Hong Kong
Chua - Hokkien/Teochew - Chinese diaspora in SE Asia
in addition to many other variations I'm not as familiar with.

Painting with broad strokes here, obviously, but there are definitely patterns, especially if you know something about the history of Chinese emigration. I'm sure there are similar things that can be found in the Romanization, Cyrillization, less codified spelling trends, etc of names from other languages as well.
posted by yeahlikethat at 9:13 PM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Basque surnames are frequently names of houses, usually descriptions of the place where the house was located. (This comes from an old custom of people who grew up a particular house taking the the name the house as surname. Since Basque farms were operated by extended families, these names didn't necessarily indicate patrilineal descent, though they were related to the other people who grew up in same house and shared the surname.) They're frequently spelled phonetically in either Spanish or French. A lot of them end in -tegi, a suffix meaning "place" (which becomes -tegui in Spanish and French phonetic transcription). Etxe "house" is a common first or second element, spelled "eche" in Spanish and "etche" in French. Mendi "mountain" and goien "hilltop" are also common elements.
posted by nangar at 4:59 AM on July 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Not quite a surname-exclusive rule, but I learned that when Indian people have Portugese surnames (like Pereira or de Souza), that may indicate links to the historic Portugese India regions along the western coast of India (like Goa or Kerala).
posted by mhum at 10:58 AM on July 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Also, in the context of Nigerian names, I think that surnames that start with Nwa-, Oka-, or Onye- are often of Igbo origin while names that start with Ade-, Ola-, Olu-, or Oye- are often of Yoruba origin.
posted by mhum at 2:13 PM on July 10, 2020