The Politics of Last Names in Afghanistan

Last names are deeply personal, a kind of shorthand for expressing family bonds. But they’re also profoundly political, reflecting the machinations of governments in the countries that family has passed through over time. The latest example comes courtesy of Afghanistan, where officials are conducting the first nationwide census in three and a half decades—and confronting a major obstacle: names in the country are malleable, and many Afghans use only one. The government’s solution is to urge its people to take on surnames. “The remote, tribal nature of Afghan villages may have had something to do with the lack of surnames,” The New York Times recently noted. “So perhaps did the historic weakness of national governments, which have tended to require fixed names in the interest of keeping track of people, to draft them or tax them.”