Surnames Quotes

We didn't have last names before they came. When they decided they needed to keep track of us, last names were given to us, just like the name "INDIAN" itself was given to us. These were attempted translations and botched Indian names, random surnames, and names passed down from white American generals, admirals, and colonels, and sometimes troop names, which were sometimes just colors. ~ Tommy Orange

As for women, whether they know it or not, they are name nomads. Their surnames are here today, gone tomorrow. Throughout their lives, women fill out official forms in different ways, apply for new passports and design several signatures. ~ Elif Shafak

There's this common perception that having a famous last name is all you need. A surname may get you a meeting, but if there's no talent you won't get the part. ~ Lily Collins

Only classical composers were known by just their surnames, and this suited my mudlark temperament quite nicely. ~ Morrissey

Here's an idea," Magnus said as we followed the surging crowds away from the docks. "Since you're to be a sorcerer, Miss Howel, perhaps we should address you as one. We all use our plain surnames with one another. So, may I call you Howel?"
I wanted to be one of them, didn't I? "All right. Shall I call you Magnus?"
"Perfection. What do you say, Blackwood? Is she Howel the sorcerer?"
"Miss Howel is a lady. One must always address ladies with proper respect." Blackwood nodded to me, the image of politeness, but I understood. He would not acknowledge me as his equal. He did not consider me a sorcerer. ~ Jessica Cluess

Some writers, I'm told, look for their characters' surnames in telephone directories. I don't - it seems too obvious. Or too deliberate: if you go looking for names, you're bound to find them, of course, but I've always had a superstitious hunch that the names you find by accident are always going to be better and more satisfying somehow. ~ Sophie Hannah

You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he's 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you're back to 1820 already. For an American that's pretty damned good, you know? ~ Henry Louis Gates

When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name. ~ Jonathan Swift

Many people nowadays have surnames that reveal their ancestors' fairy origins. Otherlander and Fairchild are two. ~ Susanna Clarke

The McEvoys, for their part, apparently had two dominant founding Y chromosomes, a theory that is supported by records revealing that when the name was anglicized, two ancient families, the Mac Fhiodhbhuidhes and the Mac an Bheathas, were drawn in under the same banner and both became McEvoys. History also indicates that fully three Irish surnames - McGuiness, Neeson, and McCreesh - are all anglicizations of the same Gaelic name Mac Aonghusa (son of Angus), which DNA evidence confirms, as all three groups overlap strongly on one Y. ~ Christine Kenneally

I cannot feel like a duchess in my
mother's sitting room."
"What do you feel like, then?"
"Hmmm." She took a sip of her tea. "Just Daphne
Bridgerton, I suppose. It's difficult to shed the surname in
this clan. In spirit, that is."
"I hope that is a compliment," Lady Bridgerton remarked.
Daphne just smiled at her mother. "I shall never escape
you, I'm afraid." She turned to Gareth. "There is nothing like one's family to make one feel like one has never
grown up. ~ Julia Quinn

Who is a man without a woman? Giving surnames after one's fathers, as if those fathers can bear children without mothers! Without Yin, there is no Yang! Without Yang, there is no Yin! Both of us are needed to make the world run! How come they think they are superior?! ~ Tamuna Tsertsvadze

And does Alan have a last name?" I asked.
"Probably," said Curtis, "but we have a 'if you have to ask, you don't need to know because I don't want to friend you on Facebook' policy. ~ Aldous Mercer

Her full name is Eva Morelli Stein Hathaway. She retains her surnames not because they define her, but because she defines them; that is, except for the first--Morelli. Ironically it is the one she's least familiar with... ~ Maryann D'Agincourt

It seemed to him that Filipinos didn't attach too much importance to what their first names could do to their fate, only to their surnames. ~ Clarissa V. Militante

In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from. ~ Anne Enright

There are many times where even I, at certain points in the evening, after a few drinks, can't pronounce my own surname. ~ Milla Jovovich

One's head is finite. You pour more and more things into it - surnames, chronologies, affiliations - and it packs them away in its tunnels, and eventually you find that you have a book about something that you publish. ~ Nicholson Baker

It was a dead hole, smelling of synthetic leather and disinfectant, both of which odors seemed to emanate from the torn scratched material of the seats that lined the three walls. It smelled of the tobacco ashes which had flooded the two standing metal ashtrays. On the chromium lip of one, a cigar butt gleamed wetly like a chewed piece of beef. There was the smell of peanut shells and of the waxy candy wrappers that littered the floor, the smell of old newspapers, dry, inky, smothering and faintly like a urinal, the smell of sweat from armpits and groins and backs and faces, pouring out and drying up in the lifeless air, the smell of clothes - cleaning fluids imbedded in fabric and blooming horribly in the warm sweetish air, picking at the nostrils like thorns - all the exudations of the human flesh, a bouquet of animal being, flowing out, drying up, but leaving a peculiar and ineradicable odor of despair in the room as though chemistry was transformed into spirit, an ascension of a kind,
…Light issuing from spotlights in the ceiling was sour and blinding like a sick breath.
There was in that room an underlying confusion in the function of the senses. Smell became color, color became smell. Mute started at mute so intently they might have been listening with their eyes, and hearing grew preternaturally acute, yet waited only for the familiar syllables of surnames. Taste died, mouth opened in the negative drowsiness of waiting. ~ Paula Fox

Amy Winehouse - her surname's beginning to sound like a description of her liver. ~ Russell Brand

It's nice to have a few names. I use a few names myself. I use a few different surnames. I call myself James sometimes. I actually use my mother's name as a professional name. But if someone calls me Mr. Murphy or Mr. Gillen, I don't like that. I don't like being called 'mister,' and I don't like being called 'sir.' ~ Aidan Gillen

You can tell who the Chinese are because they're the ones with the longest last names. That's because they felt that they had to 'out-Thai' the Thai and because the Chinese weren't allowed to take on Thai surnames that already existed ~ Amy Chua

It's Smith, actually.' Dr Smith smiled, bowing. 'I've remembered that my name is Smith. Almost definitely. Good old English name. Hopefully means 'noble valiant warriot' and not 'he who hits kittens with a hammer.' You'd be surprised the derivations of common surnames in the English countryside ... ~ James Goss