Personal names in German-speaking Europe consist of one or several given names (Vorname, plural Vornamen) and a surname (Nachname, Familienname). The Vorname is usually gender-specific. A name is usually cited in the "Western order" of "given name, surname". The most common exceptions are alphabetized list of surnames, e.g. "Bach, Johann Sebastian", as well as some official documents and spoken southern German dialects. In most of this, the German conventions parallel the naming conventions in most of Western and Central Europe, including English, Dutch, Italian, and French. There are some vestiges of a patronymic system as they survive in parts of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, but these do not form part of the official name.
Women traditionally adopted their husband's name upon marriage and would occasionally retain their maiden name by hyphenation, in a so-called Doppelname, e.g. "Else Lasker-Schüler". Recent legislation motivated by gender equality now allows a married couple to choose the surname they want to use, including an option for men to keep their birthname hyphenated to the common family name in the same way. It is also possible for the spouses to do without a common surname altogether and to keep their birthnames.
The most common given names are either Biblical ("Christian", derived from names of Biblical characters or saints; Johann/Hans "John", Georg/Jörg "George", Jakob "Jacob" and "James"; Anna, Maria, Barbara, Christina) or from Germanic names (Friedrich "Frederick", Ludwig "Louis", etc.) Since the 1990s, there has however been a trend of parents picking non-German forms of names, either for originality, or influenced by international celebrities, e.g. Liam (Gaelic form of William) rather than the German equivalent Wilhelm[citation needed] and Mila.
Most surnames are derived either from given names (patronym), occupations, or from geographical origin, less often from bodily attributes. They became heritable with the beginning of central demographic records in the early modern period.
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