[patates]

Well, I actually come from such a place. In Turkey it's not uncommon that a surname ends with "oğlu", meaning "son of X" where surname is the form "Xoğlu". Because of "reasons", there are no surnames ending with "kızı" ("daughter of") though - at least I've never came upon one.

Also, we never change them, even if the holder is not male.

[NetStrikeForce]

Funnily enough, this is more widespread than one would think. I didn't know about the Turkish example.

In Spanish, all the surnames ending in -ez also mean "son of". Even many Spanish speaking people don't know (or don't care? :)) about it, as they've been used as "normal" (sorry) surnames for long now.

Lopez: Son of Lope Rodriguez: Son of Rodrigo Perez: Son of Pedro Martínez: Son of Martín etc

[magic_beans]

I had no idea!! Was there ever a "daughter of" convention?

I love when etymology pops up in random threads :)

[NetStrikeForce]

Actually, when I said "son of" in my head I was using the gender neutral "hijo", so it applies actually to sons and daughters :-)

[vidarh]

> Also, we never change them, even if the holder is not male.

They got "frozen" in most languages once written records got widespread enough that it became common to want to be able to cross-index registers and track family relationships. It varies by country, but often it coincides with the introduction of tax authority registers or other large national databases.