We use names all the time to identify people, so much so that we rarely ask ourselves why they have one. Yet the name can influence our lives – influencing the perceptions of others and our development – and giving a name is a practice present, in different forms, in all societies, known to the human sciences. What changes are the rules: who chooses the name, when it is assigned, where it comes from, how many times it can change and even who is authorized to pronounce it. For this reason, the study of names, between onomastics, linguistics and anthropology, offers a particular perspective on human societies: through a few words we can communicate information about family, origin, religion, generation and, in some cases, the position occupied by a person in the community.
Societies without personal names: sociological studies
The anthropologist Ellen S. Bramwell, in the chapter “Personal Names and Anthropology” ofOxford Handbook of Names and Naming, We observe that a society completely devoid of personal names has not been documented. This does not mean, however, that all cultures understand the “name” as we do. Naming systems may include individual names, patronymics and matronymics, clan names, nicknames, ritual names, or terms derived from family relationships.
One of the first systematic attempts to compare these differences was by sociologist Richard D. Alford in “Naming and Identity: A Cross-cultural study of personal naming practices.” Analyzing a large cross-cultural sample, Alford showed how naming practices were linked to variables such as kinship, social organization, religion, and family structure.
In some societies the name is chosen mainly by parents, in others grandparents, relatives or ritual specialists intervene, it can remember an ancestor, describe the circumstances of birth or be selected according to precise genealogical rules. In other words, having a name seems to be almost universal, how we receive it is deeply cultural.
Even the moment of attribution of the name presents considerable intercultural variability. The assignment of a personal name, in fact, does not necessarily coincide with biological birth: in different ethnographic contexts it can occur after a few days or months and be associated with rituals through which the newborn is progressively recognized as a member of the community.
In some systems, generic terms, provisional names or birth-related names are used initially, while the personal name is established later.
There are also traditions in which the choice takes into account characteristics observed in the child, the events that accompanied the birth or the genealogical relationships into which he will be inserted. The name, in this sense, not only records a birth, but can contribute to establishing a form of social recognition of the person.
Being named after someone: ancestors and kinship
One of the most widespread practices is to derive names from family relationships. Even in Italy, the habit of giving children the names of their grandparents has long been common; similar systems, but regulated in different ways, are documented in many societies. The name thus becomes a means through which genealogy is made visible in everyday life.
Particularly interesting is the phenomenon of “namesakes”, that is, people sharing the same name. Anthropologist Joāo de Pina-Cabral studied this relationship in southern Mozambique and Bahia, Brazil, where the term “xará” is used.
In the contexts analysed, in the article “Xará: Namesakes in Southern Mozambique and Bahia (Brazil)”, he explains how sharing a name does not constitute a simple linguistic coincidence: it can create a socially recognized relationship between homonyms and, indirectly, between their networks of relationships.
The name can therefore function as an instrument of kinship and social continuity. Naming a child after a grandparent, ancestor, or significant other isn’t just about remembering them: It’s about placing the new individual within a history of relationships that precedes them.
The relationship between name and kinship, however, can take on very different meanings. In some onomastic systems the name of an ancestor establishes a form of symbolic continuity between generations.
It doesn’t always last a lifetime: technonymy systems
Another difference concerns the stability of the name. In modern Western administrative systems we are used to considering it as relatively permanent data: it appears on documents, in school archives, in contracts and in state registers. But from an anthropo-sociological point of view this is only one of the possible organizations of the onomastic system.
In different societies a person may receive new names throughout his life, use different names depending on the context or be called by terms that indicate his social relationships. There are, for example, systems of technonymy, in which an adult can be identified through his child, formulas equivalent to “mother of X” or “father of X”, making the kinship relationship a form of personal identification.
Mechanisms of this type have been documented in numerous kinship systems and also find comparable forms in the Arabic kunya, in which a person may be designated as Abū (“father of”) or Umm (“mother of”) followed by a personal name. While these are systems that cannot be completely superimposed, they show how a person’s identification can be constructed not only through an individual name, but also through the social relationships that define them.
Similarly, in different contexts a person’s onomastic repertoire can change in relation to initiations, marriage, parenthood, acquisition of status or religious affiliation. More than an immutable label, the name can therefore function as a marker of the individual’s social biography.
Alford also documents great cross-cultural variability in name-changing practices, nicknames, and forms used to address others. These practices show something important: the name does not everywhere serve exclusively to distinguish an individual, but can also indicate what that person has become, the relationships he or she has or the role he or she occupies at a certain moment in life.
When the name contains information
Names can also converse and convey cultural information. A particularly studied example is that of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) of North America. Ethnographer Carol G. Lombard has shown how traditional personal names can function as vehicles of oral transmission: through them knowledge, value, beliefs and references important to the community are recalled. The name thus becomes part of the mechanisms through which a culture communicates its memory.
But names can also provide information in a much more ordinary way. Surnames, patronymics and other onomastic elements can indicate descent, geographical origin, linguistic affiliation, professions of ancestors or religious affiliations.
This information remains visible even in onomastic systems that are very familiar today. Numerous European surnames derive, for example, from professions, such as the English Smith (translated into Italian as “blacksmith”), while others have patronymic origins and initially indicated descent from a specific individual.
In other cases the surname retains references to places of origin, personal characteristics or family affiliations. As generations pass, the original meaning may become opaque, but the structure of the name continues to retain traces of the categories through which a society has historically identified its members.
A study entitled “Cross-cultural structures of personal name systems reflect general communicative principles” published in 2026, in “Natura Communications”, based on census data and historical series from different cultural contexts, also analyzed name systems as information systems: despite being extremely different, they must solve a common problem, that is, allowing an enormous number of individuals to be identified through usable and recognizable linguistic combinations.
The name, therefore, is simultaneously individual information and social information: it distinguishes a person, but it can also suggest something about the world from which he comes.
Why are names so important according to anthropology?
Can we then say that a name really influences our life? There are no scientific reasons to think that a name determines the character or destiny of the person who bears it. But this is not necessarily the most interesting part of the question.
Rather, anthropology shows that names participate in the construction of our social identity. Joāo de Pina-Cabral, through research conducted between Portugal, Macau and Brazil, contained in “The Truth of Personal Names” (2010), highlighted how the name connects the individual simultaneously to personal relationships, linguistic universes and bureaucratic systems.
A recent review by Scott MacLochlainn, entitled “Naming and Namelessness”, published in the annual Review of Anthropology considers “naming” one of the tools through which societies produce recognition: naming means making someone identifiable within a specific social universe.
And this is perhaps where the true “power” of names lies. They don’t necessarily decide who we will become, but they help place us in the world. They can connect us to a family, remember an ancestor, indicate a language, tell of a migration, accompany a change in status or preserve a collective memory.
Even before being an individual characteristic, the name is therefore a relationship: one of the smallest and most everyday cultural technologies through which societies recognize people and give them a place in the community.
