In Spain that led to stuck-together lastnames, with or without a dash in the middle, back in the 19th and early-20th century (Iturriagarozarena = Iturriaga + Arozarena; Sáez-Chivite = Sáez + Chivite). Nowadays people can choose to name their kids with the traditional Paternal-lastname Maternal-lastname pattern or put the mother’s first. Getting a completely new lastname still does require a change of name process, which can only be done once in a lifetime and is a pretty long-drawn process.
They’d probably be Mettason or Mettadóttir, Metta is on the list of approved female names but they seem to be coming around on gender issues (as “bur” shows) so would likely go with that.
“World-” is likely out as W isn’t aproper Icelandic letter. It’s used for some names, but you want to fit in, don’t you?
Likewise, I have a colleague from a matrilineal society in southern India who uses his mother’s (given) name as his official surname. His mother’s name is part of his own name in his community, but doesn’t really function as what we’d consider a family name; but it was the closest thing he had to a surname, so he uses it as such.
Other Indians have adopted English words for occupational surnames such as “Engineer”, “Reporter”, or “Builder”, which may not be totally new in the English-speaking world but are probably getting a pretty strong signal boost from this usage.
I read a column once about a married couple whose names were Flaherty and Silverman. They had changed both of their last names to Flaherman. FWIW, I think Silverty would have sounded nicer.
Similar to what some others have alluded to, in Tamil-speaking India, one’s last name is/was one’s fathers first name. When a generation decides to follow Western convention, that particular father’s first name gets “stuck” as the family (last) name forever. Just by chance, that one name eventually might be the last name of dozens of grandchildren, etc.
You almost have it right.
I didn’t mention this case because it’s more complicated. The husband actually is adopted into the wife’s family, a different process than marriage.
My husband had a colleague whose last name was Contractor.
I believe he was of Middle-Eastern descent. I got the impression that his father came to the US, and took a name reflecting his profession (a la Smith, Tailor, Carver etc.). It made for a funny client email address - that client would suffix every non-employee’s email with “.CTR” so you’d see something like “John.Contractor.Ctr”.
It’s unlikely this name was adopted upon immigration to the United States.
“Contractor” is an actual family name in India.
The Parsi community of India is descended from Zoroastrians who fled Persia during the Muslim conquest.
They largely didn’t have family names until relatively recently in history—many names were adopted during British rule— and now often have names like Engineer, Merchant, Contractor, Shipchandler, Sodabottleopenerwala, etc., as well as occupational names in Indian languages, like Vakil (lawyer).
Freddie Mercury was born a Parsee and his born name was Farrokh Bulsara. Bulsara stands for the place Valsad in India.
As to Engineer, Merchant etc. aren’t English family names like Brewer, Miller etc. of the same category (I.e. profession) ?
Yes, they are of the same category.
I was reminded of this thread while researching the origin of a local community name. A key-word search came up with a hit, and I continued to browse the book and on the very next page was an entry for an Air Line Road named because of it’s relative straightness. Named in 1870 (and called Airline Road now) it is an entirely plausible location for the guy I knew’s family to be from.
Quibble: It is the genitive of the first name to which the suffix is added. The son of Jon is Jonsson, while the daughter of Finbog is Finbogadóttir (she was PM some years ago).
My father simply changed his name in the 30s when he was looking for a job and thought it might help to have a less Jewish sounding name. As a result the name on my birth certificate is not the one I have used all my life.
In this article, it is reported that over 800 couples in the U.K. combined their last names into a portmanteau form when they got married in 2012:
It says that it’s more common in the U.S. than it is in the U.K. One of my co-workers and his wife portmanteaued their names when their first child was born and give him that as a last name. Several years later they chose to change their last names to the same name as their son. Incidentally, that portmanteaued name is, as it happens, rare but not unknown
I thought of him when seeing this thread and checked his wikipage. He’s recently changed his name again, this time to Metta Sandiford-Artest. Sandiford is his wife’s name, and of course, Artest is his original last name.
I do remember watching the playoffs where World Peace was playing. Most of the announcers called him World Peace or sometimes Metta, although obviously they sometimes had problems remembering that name. The exception was Charles Barkley, who always called him Ron.
A well known example in California is Antonio Villaraigosa, former mayor of Los Angeles, whose name is a compendium of his and his wife’s maiden names: Villar and Raigosa.
I once worked with an Asian-looking co-worker named Haw. I asked her once if that was a common name. She said that actually, her husband’s maiden name was Hawthorne, and they shortened that.
I worked with a guy named Juve-Hu. Story was, his maiden name was Hu and his wife’s maiden name was Johnson, and they somehow got Juve-Hu out of that. It was pronounced Yu-va-hoo, accent on the YU.
The Artist(Artest) formally known as____???
My in-laws lived on Airline Drive. It was a long straight road.
The next road over was Skyline Drive.
I know two women who adopted wacky, new-age-y surnames later in life (Avenaire and Yronwode, respectively), like around the age of 40, and kept them. They both had daughters who kept their (and their fathers’) traditional birth names. This is entirely anecdotal and I have no idea what the greater cultural trends are.
I ran across the last name of Snoddy the other day. If there was ever a name that begged to be changed…
It’s an Irish name - anglicisation of Ó Snodaigh. Raymond Snoddy is a prominent journalist in the UK; he was born in Ireland. Aegus Ó Snodaigh is a politician and member of the Irish parliament.