Why is it that people can have the same last name but not be related?
In: Biology
Lack of control.
Historically, people consciously decided on what to call themselves, all by their own doing. Or got a name appointed to them by some royalty, for one reason or another.
Sometimes, the name came with a certain appointed official office. And if you died on your post, your children would go on using your appointed name.
And so would eventually family of whoever was appointed as a successor.
But most of the time, the problem was pretty much that if you thought out a cool name and decided to start using it…you could be damn sure that someone else, somewhere else in the world, also fancied and officially changed to that name.
(not to mention, of course, that there was a time when “officially changing your name” pretty much meant that you verbally told the local post office representative that you would now get mail from home with another name on it…)
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