Welcome to Gaia! ::

...I read this from a Childcraft book:



That probably didn't help much. MEH. Good luck, though.

When I have to make up a Western name I just make it "Van something" and say they're Dutch. Or "Von something" and make them German.

Don't forget names from occupations - Miller, Butcher, etc.

Yup, simply because Van and Von mean "from" in Dutch and German respectively. Hence my families one-time surname (before we were forced to change it by the family we stole it from), Van Matinessa, means From Matinessa. Where ever the hell that is.

*shrugs* I don't know... maybe Swahili? <-- stupid guess

My beloved Childcraft volume also says that last names can also be derived from; a person's occupation & their father's name + -son, -vich, -ak, -Mac, -Mc, Fitz-. I'm too lazy to type everything. =/

Smith and Johnson sounds better than complex last names in my opinion, though. (Probably because I was saddled with a Spanish surname. stare )

Eh. This all depends on the time period you're working on.

Example. Let's say 10th century England. I'm going to make up really stupid names, but they should get the point across.

John FitzSimon is the son of Simon.
Paul FitzJohn is the son of John.
So Paul's son's surname should be FitzPaul.

If you're going with a more Scottish/Ireish trend in medieval Europe, it would be more like this:

John MacSimon is the son of Simon. (Or Mc. Same thing.)
Paul MacJohn is the son of John.
So Paul's son's surname should be MacPaul.

After a while this got really confusing, because total strangers had the same surnames and it just got really confusing. So they decided to just keep one and pass it on. Or they named themselves after a landmark.

Example: My German teacher's maiden name is Rhinecker (little dots over the e). That literally means Corner of the Rhine River. Her family lived closer to Polland though, so this suggests that when some ancestor decided to keep a last name, they lived on a bend in the Rhine.

THen there's the common occupation name. Carpenter, Fletcher, Miller, Turner, Weaver, Baker, ect. This you would have in basically every European language.

As for Russian, well that's an annoying language to work with (or at least I think so, because I'm exposed to it 24/7).

Ivan Petrovich is the son of Peter.
Mila Ivanovna is the daughter of Ivan.
Vladamir Ivanovich is the son of Ivan.
Now let's say Mila married Sasha. Sasha is the son of Semion. So it would be Sasha Semionovich. But Mila would still be Mila Ivanovna. All of their children would be Alexandravich, because Alexander is Sasha's full name.

Now some where along the line, this would get confusing as all ********, so Sasha's grandchildren would retain the Alexandravich, *but* let's say Sasha's son is named Peter. Sasha's grandchildren would be adressed formally as ___ Alexandravich, but their acquiantances would call them ___ Petrovich or Petrovina. Now let's say Sasha had a granddaughter named Olga. While Olga's brother, Ivan, would have the surname Alexandravich, Olga's last name will be the feminine version of this (I'm not too sure on this, because I don't use patrnomics. They hurt my head).

Now as to the Dutch and German people. At some point they decided it would be cool to say "hey look where I'm from!" Hence the "Van" and the "Von." They English did this too.

William lives in London. So they called him William of London. Then they got lazy and it just because William London. This stays true with the Dutch and the rest of them, but some just decided to keep the from in.

This is my completely irrelevant rant. Hope it helped. I have to go learn to drive now. ^_^

i use font names a lot. like Kian Castellar and Adrian Kabel

they, unless you want them to be, don't really have to be "pre-ordained" names. if you really want, you can always look in the phone book- lol no i'm just kidding. you can surf the net too. 3nodding

yeah, try not to use those too much b.c they are over used and even though they are common, try to leave them out.
if you want specifics, i can give you some 3nodding