neither am i but my father's family name suggests that 4 or 5 generations back i have russian or ukrainian ancestry (my family name literally is the russian word for a broom, and the dutch were extremely humorous with their choices of names when the king decreed they all had to have family names... i met a dude whose name literally means "deep pants" and "broom" as my family's name is equally ironic i think

you read like a typical yugoslav to me tho, reading back over your reply in this thread... of course it could just be that you have spent a lot of time living in those parts but my smell says yugoslavia

My last name is just a regular name. Seems like the most common thing ever. Literally, [name], son of [father's name], descendant of [ancestor's name].

yeah, the history of the legalization of last names in the netherlands is quite interesting... a lot of "dutch" people don't really know where their ancestors come from going back before this decree came into force it reminds me of this funny french guy i met in auckland... he would always refer to me as "david from brizzy" because prior to going to NZ i was living in brisbane, australia the legalization of these names is really quite recent, i'm sure that it wasn't that long ago, but maybe earlier, that it was legalized in eastern europe but like you say, the names literally refer to father and place of birth... the bulgarian customs are very clear about this, they have this thing where there is a second name but it's the father's "first" name altered to the gender of the person, so the daughter of a man Ivan Valkov with a daughter Mariyana would be called Mariyana Ivanov Valkov

sorry, i mangled that Mariyana Ivanova Valkova