Surname law can refer to any

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

regulating the use of

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 ...

Canada

From 1941 to 1978, the Government of Canada issued

disc number Disc numbers, or ujamiit or ujamik in the Inuit language, were used by the Government of Canada in lieu of surnames for Inuit and were similar to dog tags. Prior to the arrival of European customs, Inuit had no need of family names, and children ...

s to identify

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

in their records. In the mid-1960s Project Surname began, and, headed by

Abe Okpik Abraham "Abe" Okpik, CM (12 January 1928 – 10 July 1997) was an Inuit community leader in Canada. He was instrumental in helping Inuit obtain surnames rather than disc numbers as a form of government identification. He was also the firs ...

, Inuit were given surnames in a similar manner to how surnames were used among Canadians of European descent.

Iceland

Icelandic law enforces the conventions of

Icelandic name Icelandic names are names used by people from Iceland. Icelandic surnames are different from most other naming systems in the modern Western world by being patronymic or occasionally matronymic: they indicate the father (or mother) of the child ...

s, which require that the last name be derived from a given name of the father or mother, suffixed with "-son" or "-dóttir". The law allows both derivations to be used, and for foreign last names to be inherited or kept by foreigners. This means that a father, mother, and child will all typically have different last names. Foreigners who marry an Icelander and get Icelandic citizenship can take the last name of their partner, or a patronym or matronym from the name of a parent or parent-in-law; these possibilities are not necessarily open to native Icelanders.

Iran

Reza Shah Pahlavi , , spouse = Maryam Savadkoohi Tadj ol-Molouk Ayromlu (queen consort)Turan AmirsoleimaniEsmat Dowlatshahi , issue = Princess Hamdamsaltaneh Princess ShamsMohammad Reza Shah Princess Ashraf Prince Ali Reza Prince Gholam Reza Prin ...

ordered Iranians to adopt Western style surnames in place of old Islamic names and titles during his reign.

Japan

A law in Japan, dating from 1896, requires a married couple to have a common surname. Most commonly it was the wife who took her husband's name. In 2011, this law was challenged as unconstitutional on

gender equality Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing d ...

grounds, but the

Supreme Court of Japan The , located in Hayabusachō, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda, Tokyo, is the Supreme court, highest court in Japan. It has ultimate judicial authority to interpret the Constitution of Japan, Japanese constitution and decide questions of national law. It ...

upheld the law in 2015.

Prussian-ruled Poland

Prussia tasked the implementation of surnames to E. T. A. Hoffmann.

Thailand

According to the current law, Person Name Act, BE 2505 (1962), to create a new

Thai name Thai names follow the Western European pattern of a given name followed by a family name. This differs from the family-name-first patterns of Cambodian, Vietnamese, and other East Asian countries. Thai names (given and family) are diverse and ...

, it must not be longer than ten Thai letters, excluding vowel symbols and diacritics. The same law also forbids the creation of a surname that duplicated any existing surnames, but there are some duplicates dating to the time before computer databases were available to prevent this. Some creations added the name of their location (

muban Muban ( th, หมู่บ้าน; , ) is the lowest administrative sub-division of Thailand. Usually translated as 'village' and sometimes as 'hamlet', they are a subdivision of a tambon (subdistrict). , there were 74,944 administrative mu ...

tambon ''Tambon'' ( th, ตำบล, ) is a local governmental unit in Thailand. Below district (''amphoe'') and province (''changwat''), they form the third administrative subdivision level. there were 7,255 tambons, not including the 180 ''khwaeng'' ...

amphoe An amphoe (sometimes also ''amphur'', th, อำเภอ, )—usually translated as "district"—is the second level administrative subdivision of Thailand. Groups of ''amphoe'' or districts make up the provinces, and are analogous to countie ...

) into surnames, similar to family name suffixes.

Turkey

On 21 June 1934, Turkey adopted the Surname Law which required all its citizens to adopt and use Western-style surnames. Only names with Turkish origin were permitted, and non-Turks with pre-existing surnames were required to adopt new Turkish names.

References

External links

* * {{Cite news, url=http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a12/articles/20070509AD12AR01.htm, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070613043402/http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a12/articles/20070509AD12AR01.htm, url-status=dead, archive-date=2007-06-13, title=Surname law challenges archaic habit, last=Chung, first=L.A., date=2007-05-09, work=San Jose Mercury News, accessdate=2008-04-17 Law-related lists