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
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sorry, i mangled that
Mariyana Ivanova Valkova
Yeah, but I’m almost Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov 🤣 The only difference is that my ancestor’s name was Zinoviy
that means you are either yugoslavian or probably russian (maybe baltic)
that "ich" thing (which is really not the same sound as the english ch at all, or the german, it's sorta like a hard "th" if anything) i understand it is a diminuitive suffix, idk what the logic behind it is
a more common thing in ukraine and southern slavic countries is the "-in" ending in names, eg "doronin" "constantin" (and -ina of course) which is another variant of diminutive that is kinda feminine based on the old latin use of this suffix
my guess is that it's like a fork in the family tree at a male or female? -ich being male, -in being male?
just curious, i never did actually get told or read up on the logic of it, but i know that -ovich and -ovin are also somewhat common family names
