The very first word of a person's existence is often the first word they are known by, yet for the Machiguenga people of the Amazon, this concept does not exist. These isolated tribes operate without the concept of specific, fixed names designating people, either individually or collectively, challenging the universal assumption that every human requires a name to be recognized. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted on the 20th of November 1989 and entering into force on the 2nd of September 1990, declares that a child has the right to a name from birth, but this legal framework does not apply to every culture on Earth. In the absence of names, social identity is constructed through kinship and context rather than a unique label, creating a stark contrast to the complex naming systems that dominate the rest of the world. This absence of a name is not a lack of identity but a different method of establishing it, one that relies on the community's understanding of relationships rather than a specific tag attached to an individual.
The Evolution of Family Tags
Surnames did not always exist as a universal requirement for human identification, and their adoption varied wildly across time and geography. In China, surnames gradually came into common use beginning in the 3rd century BC, having been common only among the nobility before that period. In contrast, surnames did not become prevalent in Japan until the 19th century, and in many parts of Europe, the common use of family names started quite early in some areas like France in the 13th century, but it often did not happen until much later in areas that used a patronymic naming custom. France required a priest to write surnames in baptismal records in 1539, yet did not require surnames for Jews, who usually used patronymics, until 1808. The compulsory use of surnames varied greatly, with Scandinavian countries not requiring them until the 19th or 20th century, and Iceland still does not use surnames for its native inhabitants. In Spain and most Latin American countries, two surnames are used, one being the father's family name and the other being the mother's family name, creating a system where former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is often called just Zapatero if the first surname is too common to allow easy identification.
The Patronymic Legacy
Before surnames became the standard, many cultures relied on patronymics, where a person's identity was tied directly to their father's given name rather than a fixed family name. In Russia, the first name and family name conform to the usual Western practice, but the middle name is patronymic, meaning all the children of Ivan Volkov would be named with the suffix -ovich if male or -ovna if female, translating to son of or daughter of. This system was in wide use throughout Europe in the first millennium CE, but was replaced by binomial systems in most places, though it remains the case only in Iceland and was recently re-introduced as an option in the Faroe Islands. In the Tamil culture of South India, older generations used the initials system where the father's given name appears as an initial, such as S. Rajeev, where S stands for the father's given name Suresh. This system ensures that the same last name will not pass down through many generations, as the name changes with every generation, unlike surnames which remain static. In some areas of the world, many people are known by a single name, and so are said to be mononymous, such as the Icelandic tradition where people are known and referred to almost exclusively by their given name.
The sequence in which names are presented can reveal deep cultural histories and linguistic structures, with the Western order of given name followed by family name being just one of many possibilities. The Eastern name order, which places the family name first, began to be prominently used in Ancient China and subsequently influenced the East Asian cultural sphere including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Hungary is the only European country that uses the Eastern naming order, where the given name is placed after the family name, a usage that originates from the structure of noun phrases in Hungarian where adjectives always precede the noun. In Japan, the government reverted the Westernized name order back to the Eastern name order in official documents in 2020, meaning writing family name first in capital letters, after previously using the Western order among the nobility starting from the Meiji Restoration in 1868. This shift caused diplomatic friction, with Japanese politician Taro Kono stating that if Western publications could write Moon Jae-in and Xi Jinping in correct order, they could surely write Abe Shinzo the same way. The order of names is not merely a convention but a reflection of how a society views the relationship between the individual and the collective.
The Power of a Name
In many cultures, a name is not just a label but a vessel for fate, identity, and spiritual connection, carrying weight far beyond simple identification. In Judaism, someone's name is considered intimately connected with their fate, and adding a name on the sickbed may avert a particular danger, while among Ashkenazi Jews, it is considered bad luck to take the name of a living ancestor as the Angel of Death may mistake the younger person for their namesake. The Inuit believe that the souls of the namesakes are one, so they traditionally refer to the junior namesakes not just by the names but also by kinship title, which applies across gender and generation without implications of disrespect or seniority. In some Polynesian cultures, the name of a deceased chief becomes taboo, and if he is named after a common object or concept, a different word has to be used for it. This belief system extends to the practice of anonymity, where some people choose to be anonymous to hide their true names for fear of governmental prosecution or social ridicule, or to employ a pseudonym, effectively severing the link between their legal identity and their public persona.
The Naming of Animals
The concept of personal names extends beyond humans to the animal kingdom, where research has revealed that species possess their own systems of individualized identification. In a 2006 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences, researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington studying bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay, Florida, found that the dolphins had names for each other, with a dolphin choosing its name as an infant. According to a 2024 article of a study of elephant calls in Amboseli National Park, Kenya, and Samburu National Reserve, elephants learn, recognize and use individualized name-like calls, demonstrating that the need for identity is not unique to human language. The practice of naming pets dates back at least to the 23rd century BC, with an Egyptian inscription from that period mentioning a dog named Abuwtiyuw. Many pet owners give human names to their pets, reflecting the owner having a human-like relationship with the pet, and dog breeders often choose specific themes for their names, sometimes based on the number of the litter, with names starting with A for puppies from the first litter and B for the second.
The Legal and Social Mask
A person's personal name is usually their full legal name, yet many individuals choose to use only part of their full legal name, a title, nickname, pseudonym, or other chosen name that is different from their legal name, reserving their legal name for legal and administrative purposes. Some people, called anonyms, choose to be anonymous, that is, to hide their true names, for fear of governmental prosecution or social ridicule of their works or actions. Teller, of the magician duo Penn and Teller, was named Raymond Joseph Teller at birth, but changed his name both legally and socially to be simply Teller, and in some official government documents, such as his driver's license, his given name is listed as NFN, an initialism for no first name. In feudal times, the royalty, nobility, and gentry of Europe traditionally have many names, including phrases for the lands that they own, such as Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch Gilbert du Motier, who is known as the Marquis de La Fayette. The bare place name was used formerly to refer to the person who owned it, rather than the land itself, and this development extended to the name of a ship in the Royal Navy, where the name with an article referred to the ship while the bare name meant its captain.