From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishsurnamesur‧name /ˈsɜːneɪm $ ˈsɜːr-/ ●●● S3 noun [countable] NAME OF A PERSONthe name that you share with your parents, or often with your husband if you are a married woman, and which in English comes at the end of your full name SYN last name, family name, → forename
Examples from the Corpus
surname• Probably no one had called him by his surname since he was in the Army.• Before the established use of surnames a recourse to nicknames was almost necessary and certainly of very frequent occurrence.• However, the head-of-family system and the ban on marriage between people of the same surname remained unchanged.• Then the computer sorts all the surnames into what we call frequency ranges.• I monitor her face for reactions to that familiar and, for us, unlucky surname.• Those patients with surnames from A-L received one level of benefit.• The alarm was not raised until last Friday when one arrived home with the wrong surname on an identity bracelet.Origin surname (1300-1400) sur- “above, beyond” (from Old French; → SURCHARGE) + name 