Short answers, pulled from the story.
A personal name, full name, or prosoponym is the set of names by which an individual person or animal is known. The word comes from Ancient Greek, prosopon for person and onoma for name. Personal names are studied within the onomastic discipline called anthroponymy.
A patronymic is a name based on the father's given name, while a matronymic is based on the mother's. Björk Guðmundsdóttir takes her name from a father named Guðmundur, and Heiðar Helguson is named for a mother called Helga.
Since October 2025, Laurence Watkins has held the record for the longest legal name, with 2,253 names as part of his full name.
Western name order places the given name first and the family name last, as used in Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Eastern name order places the family name first, beginning in Ancient China and used across China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Hungary.
In China, surnames came into common use from the 3rd century BC, having been common only among the nobility before that. In Europe, family names spread in France in the 13th century and Germany in the 16th century, while Iceland still does not use surnames for its native inhabitants.
Research indicates some animals use name-like calls. A 2006 study found bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay, Florida, had names for each other, and a 2024 article found elephants in Kenya use individualized name-like calls. The practice of naming pets dates back at least to the 23rd century BC, with an Egyptian inscription mentioning a dog named Abuwtiyuw.