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If surname does not always (or usually) refer to a family name, what should be the content of this article? WhisperToMe (talk) 23:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

There probably is worthwhile information that could be put in a "surname" article, but I don't know anything about it. I'd suggest this page be deleted as essentially a dictionary definition, but there are so many articles that are just lists of people with a given surname that I do think there should be a general article about surnames. Propaniac (talk) 17:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Redirect/combination

Why is this page not connected with family name or last name? (Yes, I do the the topic above; however, my question was not answered.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sorchah (talk • contribs) 01:05, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

• Because some surnames are not family names. WhisperToMe (talk) 20:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Surname is not a synonym for family name

The article is distinct from family name because it's about all last names, not just the last names that are family names. Several hundred years ago, members of the same family could very well have been James [the] Cooper and Anne [the] Baxter, based on their professions rather than their family. Even today, some people have a last name that is not based on what family they belong to, e.g. Angelina Jolie or Elton John. Ariadne55 (talk) 17:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

No. This article is a small, worse-than-useless stub. Common usage, as described by this article, is that "surname" and "family name" are synonyms. Last name redirects to family name, not here. Family name describes many things which are not family names including Icelandic patronyms and Spanish surnames. And of course your assertion that surnames are last names is wrong too; Chinese surnames are certainly not last names, and some people have neither surnames nor family names nor patronyms nor any kind of inherited name, but still have a last name.

In any case, I have no idea what a surname is according to this article; all I know from it is that "family name" is sometimes defined as a synonym of "surname" and that some surnames are family names and/or vice versa. From your comment I am no more enlightened.

By keeping this article separate it gives the many people who think that surnames are the same things as family names the impression that Wikipedia has a useless discussion of surnames. This makes the article worse than useless because Wikipedia does have an excellent discussion of surnames at family name. (The article does of course have a link to family name but because this article has lots of useless links like father, German and synonym, I don't think the chance of someone clicking them is substantially reduced.)

I will redirect the article back to family name again. If you want me to stop doing that: (a) redirect family name to surname or (b) make this a useful article or, at the very least, a useless one. But whatever: It needs to stop being worse than useless.

—Felix the Cassowary 05:20, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Felix, you cannot give options to users about what you will do to a page. IF you want to redirect the page, a consensus MUST be reached. If you cannot reach a conensus, then the redirect will not happen. Undeath (talk) 05:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

At the very least we should move this discussion to Family name. That article is the larger article and therefore we're more likely to get more opinions and/or content for here. I do not care if an article remains here at surname however the current article is worse than later and therefore I do most definitely care that it is not this worse-than-useless one. I do not know if there is a correct procedure for moving the discussion from here to there. —Felix the Cassowary 06:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC) PS: You apparently can give me options about what users can do to pages, but I can't?

What I give is not the same type of options that you were giving. Your options stated that you were going to do something against other's intentions if they didn't do something you wanted them to do. You were not following the right procedures to move/redirect/merge a page. I was pointing that out. Undeath (talk) 22:13, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

While the article definitely needs work, and the concept of surname is closely intertwined with "family name" in most western cultures, there are some very real and important differences between a surname and a family name, both in minority western cultures and in non-western cultures. Besides possibly being a family name, a surname may also be a patronymic or matronymic, or something else. For example, for a time in Norway, many surnames were two names, the combination of a patronymic or matronymic and a "farm name", the place where they lived, and which would change if they moved. However, most historical Norwegian figures were upper-class people who were of families that adopted the "family name" convention relatively early. There are also current cultures where the surname may change and is not based on a family name; for example, in India, it is not uncommon in some sub-groups for a person to change their surname to reflect their occupation; see Rajesh Pilot. Studerby (talk) 20:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

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