What's in the Surname: A Prologue
A herd is not a clan and surname recounts this aspect of human history along with our name. A herd can have owners and they may be shepherded but humans belong to a clan? Surname indicates 'who are your own'( who owns you, if you are a women) among resemblances. Surname marks the long history of the leader of a clan. The metropolitan and cosmopolitan urges and rural and rustic moorings relish surnames. Stuff with which orders are built, negotiated, sustained and reproduced. Scott, Tehranian, Mathias relate permanent family surname to state-making and state-naming practices as a clear attempt to get past vernacular variety and ineligibility to introduce synoptic, aggregate and standardised orders. Surname is about lineage. Title, entitlements and estates were historically connected and materially fixed in land-holdings and continue to harvest the advantages that accrue with them. The distribution of power, prestige and honour are hinged with surnames. What a name can tell is al...