1.5 Structure of a surname.   To investigate the surname portion of a name consider the following examples. These surnames have pieces that need further syntactic analysis:

The first three examples in (1) contain a particle called a nobiliary. In “Van Buren” the second piece is a surname that once referred to a place or domain by certain of its prominent characteristics. In “Von Schneider” the name is a house name derived from a simple surname, in this case originally an occupation name. “De La Flur” has a nobiliary consisting of two words, sometimes written as one, “Dela.” In the name “Delaware” this element has completely lost its sense of nobiliary origin. It seems that these first three examples are hardly worth distinguishing by form.

Examples in (2) include a definite article — the first from French, the second from Dutch. The French example refers to the occupation of clerk or cleric. The Dutch example illustrates the possiblity that the phrase is an epithet or sobriquet, originally referring to some physical characteristic of the man carrying the name (his large size).

In the first example in (3) the particle is a Gaelic word meaning “son of,” originally preposed before the given name of the father. This is called a patronymic particle. In the second example the particle points to an early Christian carrying the given name — originally someone venerated for holy deeds. We will call this kind of name a hagionym. It appears that the form of a full surname in use may manifest itself in the form of either a surname or a given name preceeded by a particle. Admittedly these examples come from various non-English cultures, but the forms cited do in fact appear in English (America) and are sometime analyzed by their owners or users. To describe the name classes in some detail as structural we will probably want to have at least the following phrase structure rules:

Note that the patronymic particle often agrees by gender with that of the given name:

An agreement rule may be used to account for gender in the patronymic particle as also between the hagionymic and the saint name. The first rule is actually two rules conflated into one.