WI: No Surnames

What is the best way to make it so there is no such thing as a family surname, but instead everyone 'at best' having a patronym, either in the Fathersson/Fathersdaugther/Mothersson/Mothersdaughter, such as many western surnames originally were, or like in Arabic where its "Son of xxx, son of yyy, son of zzz".

And what (if anything) would this lack of surnames change.

Surnames were implemented for tax reasons. Once a population has reached a critical mass it becomes hard to tax Bob son of John, because there might be twenty others spread throughout the kingdom. Seeing as it developed seperately in different cultures, I cant think of a pod that would knock it out.

Demothenes said:

Surnames were implemented for tax reasons. Once a population has reached a critical mass it becomes hard to tax Bob son of John, because there might be twenty others spread throughout the kingdom. Seeing as it developed seperately in different cultures, I cant think of a pod that would knock it out.

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Its not harder to tax Bob son of John (or Bob Johnson as the case might be), than it is to tax one of many Jack Smith's or equally many David Gracia's, so while at the face of it that arguement makes sense, it fails at closer examination, given that we have so many with similar names, that going solely by name is a folly.

Sweden passed it's laws in the early 1800s - there were WAY too many Jonas Jonassons in town, apparently.

Just using patronymics was problematic for various reasons, taxes, record keeping, etc. So, many countries standardized on some kind of surname over time.

Denmark, for example, mandated surnames in 1828. Having done a fair amount of Denmark geneology, all those Pedersons and Pederdatters can become confusing.

I think the only way to have a situation where we DON'T use surnames would be:
1) Just have much smaller, less bureaucratic societies such that fewer of the confusion issues arose

2) Develop some kind of standardized patronymic-style system that avoids some of the confusion. For example, you could have name, patronymic, and then a further qualifier (city or profession), such as Matthys Jansen Van Keulen, translated, means: Matthys, Jan’s son, of Cologne. Or, Petrus Jakobsen the blacksmith could be Petrus Jakobsen de Smit. Of course, that's where a large percentage of surnames came from.

So, hard to imagine a non-surname type system in the modern day, but you certainly have some societies/languages that still include the patronymic as the middle name, e.g. Alexandr Dmitrovich Borodin.

Sian said:

Its not harder to tax Bob son of John (or Bob Johnson as the case might be), than it is to tax one of many Jack Smith's or equally many David Gracia's, so while at the face of it that arguement makes sense, it fails at closer examination, given that we have so many with similar names, that going solely by name is a folly.

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Sian said:

Its not harder to tax Bob son of John (or Bob Johnson as the case might be), than it is to tax one of many Jack Smith's or equally many David Gracia's, so while at the face of it that arguement makes sense, it fails at closer examination, given that we have so many with similar names, that going solely by name is a folly.

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Seeing Like a State amasses evidence that it was in fact easier to keep tax records straight with surnames and that states pushed surnames explicitly for that reason.

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of places were OK with collective responsibility. So surnames was a way of keeping straight who was in the same clan. don't have the right Chu? Oh, well, he's still a Chu. The Chus are still going to care about him so punishing him still motivates the Chus to keep their members in line.

Here in Xinjiang, the Uyghurs and other minorities don't use surnames. Of course, their national ID cards use the given name of their father in place of a family name and that's what is used in all official purposes, but in their everyday lives they don't use surnames and don't really think about it.

Well, countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Iceland are most well-known examples.

Is this only for Europe?

introduce Arabic long patronymic ?

John, son of Peter, son of Luke, son of John, son of James might be useful enough for state documentation to prevent surname.

If there's a colonial power out there whose policy is not to tax the colonies directly for most of history, and they decided to implement taxation post 1980s during the early age of computers, then the natives of the colonies might have a name such as Ali bin Karno, Number 1543486.

Unfortunately, his official name would be Number 1543486.

PoorBoy said:

If there's a colonial power out there whose policy is not to tax the colonies directly for most of history, and they decided to implement taxation post 1980s during the early age of computers, then the natives of the colonies might have a name such as Ali bin Karno, Number 1543486.

Unfortunately, his official name would be Number 1543486.

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Exactly. ID numbers, invented earlier, could easily replace imposed surnames for tax purposes.