A birth name is the

name A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. The entity identified by a name is called its referent. A personal ...

of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the

surname In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community. Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...

, the

given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a fa ...

, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth register may by that fact alone become the person's legal name. The assumption in the Western world is often that the name from birth (or perhaps from baptism or ''

brit milah The ''brit milah'' ( he, בְּרִית מִילָה ''bərīṯ mīlā'', ; Ashkenazi Hebrew, Ashkenazi pronunciation: , "Covenant (religion), covenant of circumcision"; Yiddish pronunciation: ''bris'' ) is Religion and circumcision, the cerem ...

'') will persist to adulthood in the normal course of affairs—either throughout life or until marriage. Some possible changes concern middle names,

diminutive A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment. A (abbreviated ) is a word-formati ...

forms, changes relating to parental status (due to one's parents' divorce or

adoption Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from ...

by different parents). Matters are very different in some cultures in which a birth name is for childhood only, rather than for life.

Maiden and married names

The French and English-adopted terms née and né (; , ) denote an original surname at birth. The term ''née'', having feminine grammatical gender, can be used to denote a woman's

at birth that has been replaced or changed. In most English-speaking cultures, it is specifically applied to a woman's maiden name after her surname has changed due to marriage. The term ''né'', having masculine grammatical gender, can be used to denote a man's surname at birth that has subsequently been replaced or changed. The diacritic marks (the

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...

) are considered significant to its spelling, and ultimately its meaning, but are sometimes omitted. According to Oxford University's '' Dictionary of Modern English Usage'', the terms are typically placed after the current surname (e.g., " Margaret Thatcher, née Roberts" or " Bill Clinton, né Blythe"). Since they are terms adopted into English (from French), they do not have to be italicized, but they often are. In Polish tradition, the term (literally meaning "of the house" in Latin) may be used, with rare exceptions, meaning the same as ''née''.

Notes

References

{{reflist Birth Human names