Other forms: surnames
Your surname is your family name, the one you share with your parents. It goes last in English and first in several other languages.
English calls it the surname, the last name or the family name, and forms usually ask for it in capitals to avoid confusion. Many surnames began as trades, places or the father's name, which is why Smith, Hill and Johnson are so common. In Hungary, Japan and China the family name comes first, which is a real trap when filling in an international form. Married couples may take one or keep both.
1nounsurnameA family name shared with relatives, usually written last.
“Please write your surname in block capitals.”
Also accepted in games: last name
A surname is a name over a name. Latin supernōmen joins super, above, to nōmen, and Old French surnum could mean a nickname quite as readily as a family name.
Latin
supernōmen, suprānōmen — surname
Old French
surnum
Middle English
surname
English, today
surname
Built from
Middle English surname, a partial calque of Old French surnum, surnoun (“surname; nickname”) (whence Middle English surnoun), from Latin supernōmen, suprānōmen (“surname”), from super- (“over, above, beyond”) and nōmen (“name”), equivalent to sur- + name.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA