surnamed

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of surname.

   A 45-year-old woman surnamed Chen was taken to the hospital after the crash.

   The settlers surnamed the orphan after the river where they had found him.

   Note

   The participle often sits right after a noun and identifies someone by family name alone: a man surnamed Li, a woman surnamed Garcia. One spelling also serves as the simple past (they surnamed the boy after the river). In older histories the name that follows can be an added title instead, matching the noun's obsolete sense of an epithet: a king surnamed the Bold.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having or carrying a surname.

   As the last surnamed heir, he felt the weight of carrying the family name forward.

   The census lists surnamed households separately from those recorded under a single given name.

   Note

   The adjective earns its place when a family name has to be carried on. Herman Melville's Pierre feels the loneliness of being the solitary head of his family and its "only surnamed male", the one man left to bear the name. It does not grade: someone is surnamed or is not.

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