Surnaming

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. The act of assigning or adopting a family name to identify oneself or one's lineage
2. the process of designating a surname based on various cultural or personal factors
3. a practice involving the establishment or alteration of a last name within familial or social contexts

Etymology: "Surnaming" is the -ing form of "surname", so the real story belongs to its base word. The English noun came from Old French "surnom" (also spelled "surnoun"), meaning a surname or nickname, which itself came from Late Latin "supernomen", built from "super", meaning "over" or "above", and "nomen", meaning "name". Medieval English took the idea but reshaped the word: "surname" is a partial calque, a translation of the French term into English parts rather than a direct borrowing of it. The Latin sense is worth noticing. A "supernomen" was an extra name laid over a person's main one, a nickname or added label, so the "over" in the word points to a second name sitting on top of the first. The English word inherited that sense of an additional name, which is why "surname" has always been a name placed after or above the given name rather than a family heirloom in its own right.

Synonyms: naming, designating, entitling

Antonyms: unnaming