wrote:
On Fri, 8 Jan 2021 11:45:50 -0000 (UTC)
Bob wrote:
Jeremy Double wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:

It's just a cultural thing, like many Europeans have names like Magnus
Magnus*son*, and innumerable similar Slavic suffices.

In Iceland, the “son� or “dottir� name isn’t a surname, it’s a
patronymic.
It doesn’t follow down the generations like surnames do.

So the son of Magnus Sveinnson could be Óðinn Magnusson and his daughter
SigrÃ*ður Magnusdottir.

I don’t see how that makes it less of a “surname�, as it is still a
second
part to the name. What makes it different it it is not an inherited
surname, as was the Frankish and now near universal custom, or some other

I doubt the Frankish approach had much affect on the far east or africa
where surnames AFAIK behave in the same way as in europe of their own
volition.


I can’t speak for Africa, but in a lot of far eastern cultures the family
name comes first with the personal name second. There are a limited number
of options for names beyond personal ones though, and it’s pretty well
inevitable that there was parallel independent adoption. What did come from
the Franks in Europe is the idea of an immutable inherited surname (rather
than a byname that is only attached to the individual and not inherited, or
a patronymic name).

Robin