Why are famous historical figures, especially those from wartime, often referred to by their last name instead of their first?
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In many cultures which include surnames in their naming conventions, the surname is the primary name. Often, it has been considered rude to refer to someone as “John” instead of “Mr. Smith” unless you were a family member or close friend. In the United States today, people are much less formal, but our naming conventions are still rooted in this. This is most universally experienced in schools by teachers being referred to as surname, but depending on workplace environment or other situations in which you interact with strangers, you can see it elsewhere
The Western European naming conventions which have become widespread across most of the world are examples of this.
Other examples include the classical Roman naming practices. Typically, people had a personal name and a family name (often followed by another family name which originated as a nickname for a specific branch of the family), and the standard practice was to be formally known by the family name..We typically refer to the most famous member of the Caesar branch of the Julius family as “Julius Caesar” rather than his personal name of “Gaius,” and his great-uncle Gaius Marius who was the greatest political figure of a previous generation is “Marius” rather than “Gaius.” Lucius Cornelius Sulla, one Marius’s rivals, and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (who got that fourth name by defeating Carthage in war, since Carthage is in what is now Tunisia) are famous members of another prominent family of the republic, the Cornelius family: “Sulla” and “Scipio” or “Scipio Africanus.” Gaius Julius Caesar was killed famously by a conspiracy in which Marcus Junius Brutus (from the Junius family, the third of the three most prominent families) was one of the main figures. We generally call him Brutus.
As a contrasting example, in many Semitic-speaking cultures, the personal name is the primary name by which a person is known to the public. With Carthage (which spoke Phoenician), for example, you might hear about the Barcid family or the Hannonid family. These were simply names given by historians to families where one major ancestor was a man named Barca or Hanno. Thus, the military leader Hamilcar Barca and his son Hannibal are known by their personal names unlike the previously-mentioned Scipio Africanus who defeated Hannibal.
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