Events surrounding birth
Among several ethnic groups in Africa, picking out names can be influenced by circumstances the family finds themselves in around the time a child is born.
Often, such names are complete sentences.
Ayodele (joy has come home) is a unisex name for a baby whose birth brought happiness to their Yoruba parents in Nigeria.
Kimaiyo and Jemaiyo are names sometimes given to baby boys and girls whose births coincide with men drinking locally brewed beer (Maiywek) among the Kalenjins.
Misrak (east) was given to an Ethiopian baby girl whose father was in Japan at the time she was born.
Some names, especially in Zimbabwe, reflect the mood or circumstance of the family at the time of birth. Some of them serve as warnings or rebukes. e.g:
Nhamo means misfortune
Maidei asks the question "What did you want?"
Even before parents select a western or religious name for their child, the baby already has a name.
Among some Ghanaian ethnic groups like the Akan, Ga, Ewe and Nzema, a name is automatically assigned based on the day the child is born. These day names correspond to the day of the week someone is born and so by default, everybody has one - though the name may not necessarily appear on official documents.
In many African cultures, there is no need for someone to explain whether they are the eldest or youngest of their siblings. This is because their names can reveal that much. This is especially true of twins.
If you meet a Ugandan boy or man called Kakuru or Wasswa, he is likely to be an elder twin. The younger male twin is usually called Kato. These are names specially reserved for twins.
Among some groups in eastern and southern Africa, certain names are selected depending on the time of the day or season a child is born. such as the the Luos who are very specific:
Omondi (dawn)
Okinyi (morning)
Onyango (mid-morning)
Ochieng' (sunny midday)
Otieno (night)
Oduor (midnight)
Girls are given the same names but starting with an A instead of an O.
Native American Naming Traditions
Native American naming traditions vary depending on each particular tribe. Typically they are represented by an animal symbolizing desirable characteristics or a certain trait. A Native American name gives us an insight into the personality of the one who possesses it.
Take the famous examples mentioned above:
• Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witk): Lakota: "His-Horse-Is-Crazy"
• Sitting Bull (nicknamed Húŋkešni): Lakota Sioux Plains: "Slow"
• Squanto (also known as Tisquantum): Patuxet Tribe: “divine rage”
• Geronimo: Chiricahua Apache Tribe: "the one who yawns"
• Sacajawea: Shoshone: "Bird-woman"
• Pocahontas (Born Matoaka, known as Amonute) : Powhatan Tribe: "playful one"
Each name fulfills the purpose of revealing something about the character or temperament of the person or place. Names like these are still in use across America today. Some people receive more than one name, which reflects significant character changes during their lifetime. Legal names are given, but Native American names are earned.
Indian name
Indian names are based on a variety of systems and naming conventions, which vary from region to region. Names are also influenced by religion and caste and may come from epics. India's population speaks a wide variety of languages and nearly every major religion in the world has a following in India. This variety makes for subtle, often confusing, differences in names and naming styles. Due to historical Indian cultural influences, several names across South and Southeast Asia are influenced or adaptations of Indian names or words.
For some Indians, their birth name is different from their official name; the birth name starts with a randomly selected name from the person's horoscope (based on the nakshatra or lunar mansion corresponding to the person's birth).
Many children are given three names, sometimes as a part of religious teaching.
Karnataka
North Karnataka surnames are drawn from the name of the place, food items, dresses, temples, type of people, platforms, cities and profession and so on. Surnames are drawn from many other sources.
Katti as a suffix is used for soldiers while Karadis is related to local folk art. Surnames according to trade or what they traditionally farm include Vastrad (piece of cloth), Kubasad (blouse), Menasinkai (chili), Ullagaddi (onion), Limbekai, Ballolli (garlic), Tenginkai (coconut), Byali (pulse) and Akki (rice). Surnames based on house include Doddamani (big house), Hadimani (house next to the road), Kattimani (house with a platform in its front), Bevinmarad (person having a big neem tree near his house) and Hunasimarad (person having a big tamarind tree near his house).
A carpenter will have Badigar as a surname while Mirjankar, Belagavi, Hublikar and Jamkhandi are surnames drawn from places. Angadi (shop), Amavasya (new moon day), Kage (crow), Bandi (bullock cart), Kuri (sheep), Kudari (horse), Toppige (cap), Beegadkai (key), Pyati (market), Hanagi (comb) and Rotti (bread) are some other surnames.
Kashmir
Kashmiri names often have the following format: first name, middle name (optional), family name. (For example: Jawahar Lal Nehru)
Nicknames often replace family names. Hence, some family names like Razdan and Nehru may very well be derived originally from the Kaul family tree.
Village names were used only after the arrival of the Portuguese, when the people migrated from their ancestral villages. A suffix kar or hailing from was attached to the village name.
Tamil Nadu
Usually, Tamil names follow this pattern: Initial (Village name), Initial (Father's name), First Name, Caste name (Example: E.V. Ramasamy, where E stands for Erode, and V stands for the father's name).There is a widespread usage of a patronym (use of the father's first name as the second name). This means that the first name of one generation becomes the second name of the next.
Arabic name
Arabic names have historically been based on a long naming system. Most Arabs have not had given/middle/family names but rather a chain of names. This system remains in use throughout the Arab world.
Ism
The ism (اسم), is the given name, first name, or personal name; e.g. "Ahmad" or "Fatimah". Most Arabic names have meaning as ordinary adjectives and nouns, and are often aspirational of character. For example, Muhammad means 'Praiseworthy' and Ali means 'Exalted' or 'High'.
The syntactic context will generally differentiate the name from the noun/adjective. However Arabic newspapers will occasionally place names in brackets, or quotation marks, to avoid confusion.
Indeed such is the popularity of the name Muhammad throughout parts of Africa, Arabia, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia, it is often represented by the abbreviation "Md.", "Mohd.", "Muhd.", or just "M.". In India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, due to its almost ubiquitous use as a first name, a person will often be referred to by their second name:
Md. Dinar Ibn Raihan
Mohd. Umair Tanvir
Md. Osman
Nasab
See also: Patronymic § Arabic
The nasab (نسب) is a patronymic or series of patronymics. It indicates the person's heritage by the word ibn (ابن "son", colloquially bin) or ibnat ("daughter", also بنت bint, abbreviated bte.).
Ibn Khaldun (ابن خلدون) means "son of Khaldun". Khaldun is the father's personal name or, in this particular case, the name of a remote ancestor.
Several nasab names can follow in a chain to trace a person's ancestry backwards in time, as was important in the tribally based society of the ancient Arabs, both for purposes of identification and for socio-political interactions. Today, however, ibn or bint is no longer used (unless it is the official naming style in a country, region, etc.: Adnen bin Abdallah). The plural is 'Abnā for males and Banāt for females. However, Banu or Bani is tribal and encompasses both sexes.
Laqab
The laqab (لقب), pl. alqāb (القاب); agnomen; cognomen; nickname; title, honorific; last name, surname, family name. The laqab is typically descriptive of the person.
An example is the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (of One Thousand and One Nights fame). Harun is the Arabic version of the name Aaron and al-Rasheed means "the Rightly-Guided".
In ancient Arab societies, use of a laqab was common, but today is restricted to the surname, or family name, of birth.
Nisbah
The nisbah (نسبة) surname could be an everyday name, but is mostly the name of the ancestral tribe, city, country, or any other term used to show relevance. It follows a family through several generations. It most often appears as a demonym (ex. البغدادي "Al-Baghdadi", meaning that the person is of Baghdad or descendant of people from Baghdad).
The laqab and nisbah are similar in use, thus, a name rarely contains both.
Kunya
A kunya (Arabic: كنية, kunyah)[2] is a teknonym in Arabic names. It is a component of an Arabic name, a type of epithet, in theory referring to the bearer's first-born son or daughter. By extension, it may also have hypothetical or metaphorical references, e.g. in a nom de guerre or a nickname, without literally referring to a son or a daughter. For example, Sabri Khalil al-Banna was known as Abu Nidal, "father of struggle".
Use of a kunya implies a familiar but respectful setting.
A kunya is expressed by the use of abū (father) or umm (mother) in a genitive construction, i.e. "father of" or "mother of" as an honorific in place of or alongside given names in the Arab world and the Islamic world more generally.
A kunya may also be a nickname expressing the attachment of an individual to a certain thing, as in Abu Bakr, "father of the camel foal", given because of this person's kindness towards camels.
Arab Muslim Naming Practices
A common name-form among Arab Muslims is the prefix ʿAbd ("slave", fem. ʿAmah) combined with the name of Allah (God), Abdullah (عبد الله "slave of God"), or with one of the epithets of Allah.
As a mark of deference, ʿAbd is usually not conjoined with the prophets' names. Nonetheless such names are accepted in some areas. Its use is not exclusive to Muslims and throughout all Arab countries, the name Abdel-Massih, "Servant of Christ", is a common Christian last name.
During the Persian Ghurid dynasty, Amir Suri and his son Muhammad ibn Suri adopted Muslim names despite being non-Muslims. Other non-Muslim peoples, such as the Kalash, also take names such as Muhammad.
Converts to Islam may often continue using the native non-Arabic non-Islamic names that are without any polytheistic connotation, or association.
Arab Christian Naming Practices
To an extent Arab Christians have names indistinguishable from Muslims, excepting some explicitly Islamic names, e.g. Muhammad. Some common Christian names are:
Arabic versions of Christian names (e.g. saints' names: Buṭrus for Saint Peter).
Names of Greek, Armenian, and Aramaic or Neo-Aramaic origin.
Use of European names, especially French, Greek and, to a lesser extent, Spanish ones (in Morocco). This has been a relatively recent centuries-long convention for Christian Arabs, especially in the Levant. For example: Émile Eddé, George Habash, Charles Helou, Camille Chamoun.
Names in honor of Jesus Christ:
Abd al-Yasuʿ (masc. ) / Amat al-Yasuʿ (fem.) ("Slave of Jesus")
Abd al-Masiḥ (masc.) / Amat al-Masiḥ (fem.) ("Slave of the Messiah")
Derivations of Maseeḥ ("Messiah"): Masūḥun ("Most Anointed"), Amsāḥ ("More Anointed"), Mamsūḥ "Anointed" and Musayḥ "Infant Christ". The root, M-S-Ḥ, means "to anoint" (as in masah) and is cognate to the Hebrew Mashiah.
Dynastic or family name
Some people, especially in the Arabian Peninsula, when descendant of a famous ancestor, start their last name with Āl "family, clan" (آل), like the House of Saud ﺁل سعود Āl Ṣaʻūd or Al ash-Sheikh ("family of the sheikh"). Āl is distinct from the definite article (ال). If a reliably-sourced version of the Arabic spelling includes آل (as a separate graphic word), then this is not a case of the definite article, so Al (capitalised and followed by a space, not a hyphen) should be used. Ahl, which has a similar meaning, is sometimes used and should be used if the Arabic spelling is أهل.
Dynasty membership alone does not necessarily imply that the dynastic آل is used – e.g. Bashar al-Assad.
Icelandic name
Icelandic names are names used by people from Iceland. Icelandic surnames are different from most other naming systems in the modern Western world by being patronymic or occasionally matronymic.
The Icelandic system is thus not based on family names (although some people do have family names and might use both systems). Generally, with few exceptions, a person's last name indicates the first name of their father (patronymic) or in some cases mother (matronymic) in the genitive, followed by -son ("son") or -dóttir ("daughter").
Naming conventions in Ethiopia and Eritrea
The naming convention used in Eritrea and Ethiopia does not have family names and typically consists of an individual personal name and a separate patronymic. This is similar to Arabic, Icelandic, and Somali naming conventions. Traditionally for the Habesha peoples (Eritrean-Ethiopians) , the lineage is traced paternally; legislation has been passed in Eritrea that allows for this to be done on the maternal side as well.
In this convention, children are given a name at birth, by which name they will be known. To differentiate from others in the same generation with the same name, their father's first name and sometimes grandfather's first name is added. This may continue ad infinitum. Outside Ethiopia, this is often mistaken for a surname or middle name but unlike European names, different generations do not have the same second or third names.

French name
French people have one, two or more given names (first names). One of them (nowadays almost always the first, in the past often the last) is used in daily life.
Traditionally, most people were given names from the Roman Catholic calendar of saints. Common names of this type are Jacques (James), Jean (John), Michel (Michael), Pierre (Peter), or Jean-Baptiste (John the Baptist) for males; and Marie (Mary), Jeanne (Jane), Marguerite (Margaret), Françoise (Frances), or Élisabeth (Elizabeth) for females. In certain regions such as Brittany or Corsica, more local names (usually of local saints) are often used.
Almost all traditional given names are gender-specific. However, a few given names, such as Dominique, Claude, and Camille (traditionally masculine, now mostly feminine), are given to both males and females; for others, the pronunciation is the same but the spelling is different: Frédéric (m) / Frédérique (f). In medieval times, a woman was often named Philippe (Philippa), now an exclusively masculine name (Philip), or a male Anne (Ann), now almost exclusively feminine (except as second or third given name, mostly in Brittany). From the middle 19th-century into the early 20th-century, Marie was a popular first name for both men or women, however, before and after this period it has been almost exclusively given to women as a first given name, even if the practice still exists to give it to males as second or third given name, especially in devout Catholic families.
In England
In England, it was unusual for a person to have more than one given name until the seventeenth century when Charles James Stuart — King Charles I — was baptised with two names. This was a French fashion which spread to the English aristocracy, following the royal example. The fashion then spread to the general population, becoming common by the end of the eighteenth century.
Some double given names for women were used at the start of the eighteenth century but these were used together as a unit: Anna Maria, Mary Anne and Sarah Jane. These became stereotyped as the typical names of servants and so became unfashionable in the nineteenth century. In the Southern United States, there is still a common style of female double name.
Ancient Rome
Men—except slaves—in ancient Rome always had hereditary surnames, i.e., nomen (clan name) and cognomen (side-clan name). However, the multi-name tradition was lost by the Middle Ages.
The cognomen was third name of a citizen of ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. Initially, it was a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditary. Hereditary cognomina were used to augment the second name, the gens (the family name, or clan name), in order to identify a particular branch within a family or family within a clan.
Eastern Slavic naming customs
Commonly used in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and to an extent in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia. It is named after the East Slavic language group that the Russian language belongs to. They are also found occasionally in the Balkans among older generations.
Being highly synthetic languages, Eastern Slavic treats personal names as grammatical nouns and apply the same rules of inflection and derivation to them as for other nouns. So one can create many forms with different degrees of affection and familiarity by adding the corresponding suffixes to the auxiliary stem derived from the original name. The auxiliary stem may be identical to the word stem of the full name (the full name Жанна Zhanna can have the suffixes added directly to the stem Жанн- Zhann- like Жанночка Zhannochka), and most names have the auxiliary stem derived unproductively (the Russian name Михаил Mikhail has the auxiliary stem Миш- Mish-, which produces such name-forms as Миша Misha, Мишенька Mishenka, Мишуня Mishunya etc, not *Михаилушка Mikhailushka).
Unlike English, in which the use of diminutive forms is optional even between close friends, in East Slavonic languages such forms are obligatory in certain contexts because of the strong T–V distinction: the T-form of address usually requires the short form of the counterpart's name. Also, unlike other languages with prominent use of name suffixes, such as Japanese, the use of derived name forms is mostly limited to the T-addressing: there is no way to make the name more formal than the plain unsuffixed full form, and no suffixes can be added to the family name.
Short form
The "short name" (Russian: краткое имя kratkoye imya), historically also "half-name" (Russian: полуимя poluimya), is the simplest and most common name derivative. Bearing no suffix, it is produced suppletively and always has the declension noun ending for both males and females, thus making short forms of certain unisex names indistinguishable: for example, Sasha (Russian: Саша) is the short name for both the masculine name Aleksandr (Alexander) and the feminine form Aleksandra (Alexandra).
Affectionate diminutive
Typically formed by suffixes -еньк- (-yenk-), -оньк- (-onk-), -ечк- (-yechk-), -ушк (-ushk), as illustrated by the examples below. It generally emphasises a tender, affectionate attitude and is roughly analogous to German suffixes -chen, -lein, Japanese -chan and -tan and affectionate name-derived nicknames in other languages. It is often used to address children or intimate friends.
Serbian surnames
Most Serbian surnames have the surname suffix -ić (Serbian Cyrillic: -ић) ([itɕ]). This can sometimes further be transcribed as -ic. The -ić suffix is a Slavic diminutive, originally functioning to create patronymics. Thus the surname Petrović means the little son of Petar (Petrić signifies the little son of Petra, the widow).
This form is often associated with Serbs from before the early 20th century.
Indigenous Austraian names
Many Aboriginal people were known by a single or common first name and no surname for example, Nellie, Jenny, Bobby, Jimmy. Surnames were often assigned by European employers and Aboriginal people were sometimes given their employer’s surname.
Bennelong
Some sources give a string of names. Such as Woollarawarre Bennelong, given 5 names at different times during the various ritual inductions he underwent.
Skin
While not truly related to a persons name, in traditional Australian Aboriginal cultures there are subsection systems that are a unique social structure that divide all of Australian Aboriginal society into a number of groups, each of which combines particular sets of kin. the system governs social interaction, particularly marriage (which group can marry the other).
Subsections are widely known as "skins". Each subsection is given a name that can be used to refer to individual members of that group. Skin is passed down by a person's parents to their children.
The name of the groups can vary. There are systems with two such groupings (these are known as 'moieties' in kinship studies), systems with four (sections), six and eight (subsection systems). Some language groups extend this by having distinct male and female forms, giving a total of sixteen skin names.
Chinese name
Modern Chinese names consist of a surname known as xing (姓, xìng), which comes first and is usually but not always monosyllabic, followed by a personal name called ming (名, míng), which is nearly always mono- or disyllabic.
Prior to the 20th century, educated Chinese also utilized a "courtesy name" or "style name" called zi (字, zì) by which they were known among those outside their family and closest friends. This practice is a tradition in the Sinosphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
Women might adopt a zi in place of their given name upon marriage. One also may adopt a self-chosen courtesy name.
Given names are chosen based on a range of factors, including possession of pleasing sound and tonal qualities, as well as bearing positive associations or a beautiful shape. Two-character ming may be chosen for each character's separate meaning and qualities, but the name remains a single unit which is almost always said together even when the combination no longer 'means' anything. It is also considered bad form to name a child after a famous person, although tens of thousands might happen to share a common name such as "Liu Xiang". Similarly, owing to the traditional naming taboos, it is very uncommon in China to name a child directly after a relative, since such children would permit junior family members to inappropriately use the personal names of senior ones. Ancestors can leave a different kind of mark: Chinese naming schemes often employ a generation name. Every child recorded into the family records in each generation would share an identical character in their names. Sixteen, thirty-two, or more generations would be worked out in advance to form a generation poem.
Japanese names
Japanese names in modern times usually consist of a family name (surname), followed by a given name. More than one given name is not generally used. Japanese names are usually written in kanji, which are characters usually Chinese in origin but Japanese in pronunciation. The kanji for a name may have a variety of possible Japanese pronunciations, hence parents might use hiragana or katakana when giving a birth name to their newborn child.
Many Japanese family names derive from features of the rural landscape; for example, Ishikawa (石川) means "river of the stones", Yamamoto (山本) means "the base of the mountain", and Inoue (井上) means "above the well".
Korean name
A Korean name consists of a family name followed by a given name.
The family names are subdivided into bon-gwan (clans), i.e. extended families which originate in the lineage system used in previous historical periods. Each clan is identified by a specific place, and traces its origin to a common patrilineal ancestor.
Married men and women keep their full personal names, and children inherit the father's family name unless otherwise settled when registering the marriage.
Many Koreans have their given names made of a generational name syllable and an individually distinct syllable, though this practice is declining in the younger generations. The generational name syllable is shared by siblings in North Korea, and by all members of the same generation of an extended family in South Korea.