Foreign surnames

[bhchao]

There are many foreign surnames that are easily recognizable.

All Armenian surnames end in "ian" or "yan".

Do all Italian surnames end in a vowel, like Japanese surnames?

Also most Greek surnames seem to end with an "s", like Peponis or Padapolous.

Also I noticed that many Russian surnames end in "in" or "ev", like Lenin, Putin, Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Grinkov, etc...

[imron]

Many Finnish surnames end in nen, and/or have double consonants in them: Häkkinen, Mikkanen, Hipponen etc

[carlo]

Do all Italian surnames end in a vowel, like Japanese surnames?

Most but not all, there are exceptions. The orthography of European surnames was standardised only recently (roughly a few hundred years). Back then many 'foreigners' who moved to Italy could easily 'translate' their own surname into the local dialect or take an entirely new one, bequeathing 'Italian surnames' to their descendants. And because of dialect influences different families in different countries may end up having the same surname (like Bernard), so sometimes you can't even tell whether a given surname is Italian or French, say.

[roddy]

MacSURNAME's are of course very common in Scotland - you'll quite often see filing cabinets where A-L takes up one drawer at the start, N-Z takes up one at the end, and the five in the middle are all M's.

Roddy

[Lu]

Dutch surnames often start with 'Van' or 'Van de'.

[Jose]

In Spanish, it is very common for surnames to end in "-ez", like "González", "Fernández", "Martínez", "Rodríguez" and so on. Originally this used to mean "son of", González being Gonzalo's son, Fernández Fernando's son and so on. It is not known what that "ez" stands for. According to a theory, it would derive from a Latin genitive (as would be the case with Italian surnames like Martini), but it is difficult to explain the appearance of that final "z" sound, so it is also thought that it may be of pre-Roman origin.

The ending exists in Portuguese, where it is spelled "-es". So, in Portuguese you have surnames like Fernandes, Gonçalves or Rodrigues. But Martínez, one of my surnames, does not seem to exist in Portuguese.

This kind of surname is common in central Spain, both North and South, and in Portugal, but not in the Catalan-speaking areas of Eastern Spain, where they tend to have different surnames. So, if you meet a person from Barcelona or Valencia with a surname like González or Fernández, you can guess that they are likely to have a father or grandfather from Central or Western Spain.

[irishbob]

most irish surnames begin with "O" (meaning 'from') or "Mac" (meaning 'son'), for example O'Brian or McMahon. Also the ending '-aigh' is quite common.

[xiaojiang216]

Some Russian surnames do not end in "v"... for example:

Kloysner

Another Greek name for the repitoire:

Skoularikis