Surnames

Overview

Surnames, or family names, are how Dosjoryans identify themselves with their families and are used to avoid confusion when two people have the same first, or given, name.

Conventions

Every Dosjoryan gain's their father's surname at birth is they are born within wedlock, or to an unmarried couple who have chosen to marry but have reasons to wait. Regardless of if the child is a boy or a girl, they are given the same surname. Except for in a few rare circumstances in some areas of the land, a person never loses their surname. Women who marry are gifted the surname of her husband, but they retain the surname of their birth family and the husband's name comes second in their identity.
Orphans are given the surname of their guardian if their birth surname is unknown. Otherwise they are identified with their birth father's surname. Priority is given to their primary male guardian, if they have one, in the event that they have multiple guardians with different surnames. if their sole guardian or guardians are female, the orphaned child gains the woman's surname as if she were a man, and this is one of the few situations where a woman's surname is given to someone.
If a woman gives birth to a child out of wedlock and not in a situation there they stand to marry the father of their child, the child takes a modified version of the mother's surname. There is no standard was of altering the child's surname, though the new name must be similar to the mother's name and is chosen in the presence of a recordkeeper. Even though such situations were a woman gives birth out of wedlock are often out of her control, such as in the event of rape or divorce before birth, being forced to give their child an altered version of their surname is meant to be a form of humiliation borne from the misguided belief that women of the past, particularly unmarried women, had a tendency to get into trouble and needed rules and strict punishments to keep them in line. Through the centuries, the impact of having a child with an altered surname has lessened, and even disappeared if it is known that the factors leading to the situation were out of the woman's control. The practice of giving altered surnames, however, has not diminished.

Importance of Surnames

Even though Dosjoryans do not know why their ancestors across the ocean started using surnames, they understand that using them is more than just a way of identifying people and distinguishing between different families. A surname is a link to one's history and a source of pride if their family is a respectable one. Eldest male children often are taught at a young age to grow into respectable adults who will keep their surname untarnished and will pass it on to the next generation, if possible.

Surnames in Early Dosjoryan History

After humans made peace with the Gendirlo, polygyny was made legal for forty seven years. One unintended consequence of this was that many young men and women attempted, and succeeded, in abandoning their family identity so that they could more easily find a legal suitor to marry. In all cases, these people changed their surname, as records were sparse at this time. Had this not been the case, the number of unique surnames would have increased gradually over two thousand years from cases of children born out of wedlock, and finding someone legally unrelated with the same surname would not be very difficult. Instead, the number of known surnames increased dramatically early in Dosjorya's history. Since this time, the increase has been slow and steady, but with so many surnames already in existence, it is much harder to find someone unrelated with the same surname.