Personal name

It is nearly universal for a person to have a name; the rare exceptions occur in the cases of mentally disturbed parents, or wild children growing up in isolation. A personal name is usually given at birth or at a young age, and is usually kept throughout life; there might be additional names indicating family relationships, area of residence, and so on. The details of naming are strongly governed by culture; some are more flexible about naming than others, but for all cultures where historical records are available, the rules are known to change over time.

Naming convention

In contemporary Western society (except for Iceland and Hungary), the most common naming convention is that of a given name, usually indicating the child's sex, followed by the parents' family name. In earlier times, Scandinavian countries followed patronymic naming, with people effectively called "X son/daughter of Y"; this is now the case only in Iceland.

Related Topics:
Western society - Iceland - Hungary - Given name - Family name

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Different cultures have different conventions for personal names. This is a list of articles about particular cultures' naming conventions.

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• Akan name
• Arabic name
• Chinese name
• Fijian name
• Philippine names
• German name
• Hawaiian name
• Hebrew name
• Hungarian name
• Icelandic name
• Indian name
• Japanese name
• Korean name
• Polish name
• Vietnamese name
• Roman name
• Names in Russian Empire, Soviet Union and CIS countries
• Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan names