family name
"family-name" is a 10-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“family name” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 11
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Synonym of surname: a name designating a person as a member of a family.
Corpus desk
Index EN-family-name · family name · English
family name · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 11 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "F" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | family name |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “family name” in English
Rare enough to double-check
family name is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
No generated misspelling entries exist for family name in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is family name, spelled F-A-M-I-L-Y- -N-A-M-E.
Definition
- 1Synonym of surname: a name designating a person as a member of a family.
- 2A family’s honor or reputation.
- 3A given name common within a family or given because of another family member.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how family name appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
In the Chinese name Mao Zedong, Mao is the family name and Zedong is the given name.
He says, however, that he is sure he is happier, even in this situation, than are some of his cousins at this instant, who are struggling in poverty to be genteel, or to keep up a family name, and he would not change places with those who are in a state of idle and opprobrious dependance.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.