I’m abundently familiar with rationale of the origins of the majority of Western surnames (who your daddy was, where you’re from, what you do for a living, etc).
Did East Asian surnames evolve along similar lines? If not, how did East Asians go about getting surnames?
Obviously the ninjas all went here.
It depends on the region. In the Indian subcontinent, traditionally, your surname was your father’s first name. Basically, a little like the ‘son of’ western names.
Nowadays, particularly with immigration to the west, more western approaches have been taken – basically the surname becomes the first name of an ancestor a few generations back is used. In the case of my father’s side of the family its the first name of my great great grandfather, whereas on my mother’s side is the first name of my great grandfather. It varies from family to family, but eventually these names become almost clan-like.
In Thailand, during the 1800s, the King decreed that only Thais could own land. The rich but minority Chinese-Thais all rushed to change their clan names to Thai names. I’m not sure that even Thais had family names before then. Thais usually have long, fairly unique firstnames and are known by those more than their lastnames even now. Anyway, lastnames had to be unique. So they made a bunch of Thai names up. I’m pretty sure that the government had to approve them. The good names (read: short) got taken up pretty quickly. So lastnames got longer and longer. Now you can tell how long a Thai’s family has been Thai by the length of their lastname. Compare: Karot, Sumitra and Sriastit to Chawakitchareon, Thaveeprungsriporn, Bunchorndhewakul and Lohwongwattana.
Note: these are real last names of Thai staff in the Engineering School at Chulalongkorn University. Chula is generally regarded as the best school in Thailand.
This is a page about Chinese surnames and their meanings. There have been family names in Chinese for a very long time, since the oldest figures I’ve seen referred to generally have surnames.
Japanese surnames came about much as European ones, usually related to geographic features, regions or professions. For instance, Honda means “[main] rice field” and Takahashi means “high bridge.”