Johnson, Petrov and O'Conor all hide a father's name inside them
Rodríguez began as son of Rodrigo, Powell as ap Hywel, and MacAllister as son of Alistair. Across much of the world, naming a child after the father's first name came long before fixed family surnames, and in places from Iceland to Somalia it never stopped. In Central Asia it has become a quiet political signal.
A patronymic is a name drawn from a father's given name, or sometimes from a grandfather or earlier male ancestor. The word comes from Greek roots for father and name, and entered English twice: patronymic appears in 1612, while patronym arrived from French in 1834. Many surnames today are fossilised patronymics. Carlsen means son of Carl, Ilyin means of Ilya, FitzGerald son of Gerald, and O'Conor points back to a grandson or descendant of Conchobhar.
Where the living system survives, surnames can be absent altogether. In Ethiopia and Eritrea a person carries their own name followed by the father's, with the grandfather's added for official papers, so everyone is addressed by first name, as in Dr. Lemlem. Married women keep their own names. Somalis string names back through father and grandfather, memorise long lineages to place themselves within a sub-clan, and use the grandfather's name as a legal surname. Among the Zulu, Shaka kaSenzangakhona meant Shaka son of Senzangakhona, and such lineages are still recited at royal ceremonies. Iceland's law actively favours patronyms, and more recently matronyms, over family names.
In Yunnan, several peoples including the Hani, Yi and Jingpo use a chain system in which the last syllable or two of a father's name become the opening of his son's, so a family line can be read through the names themselves. The rulers of Nanzhao and Dali followed this pattern.
After the Soviet collapse, Central Asian names became a battleground between Russian and local forms. Kazakhstan passed a 1996 law allowing traditional forms, and in 2007 President Emomali Rakhmonov trimmed his Russian-style name to Emomali Rahmon, with many civil servants copying him. Yet migrant work in Russia pulls the other way: in 2022 and 2023 almost 12,000 Kyrgyz citizens adopted Russian endings because their own names seemed unfamiliar there, even as Speaker Nurlanbek Shakiev went the opposite direction in 2025, becoming Nurlanbek Turgunbek uulu.
Source: Patronymic
