Etymology

surname

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Today it means: The portion of a person's name that is generally hereditary or treated as an indicator of a person's family, which may be shared with other members of the family, or otherwise derived from their names in some fashion; distinguished from that person's given name(s). Full definition →

Middle English surname ← Old French surnum ← Late Latin supernōmen, suprānōmen
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The story

  1. Late Latin · derived fromsupernōmen, suprānōmen“surname”
  2. Old French · derived fromsurnum
  3. Middle English · inherited fromsurname
  4. English todaysurname

Inherited from Middle English surname, a partial calque of Old French surnum, surnoun (“surname; nickname”) (whence Middle English surnoun), from Late Latin supernōmen, suprānōmen (“surname”), from super- (“over, above, beyond”) and nōmen (“name”), equivalent to sur- + name.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.