Another factor is the secularisation that took place during the communist rule, which discouraged explicitly Christian or Muslim given names.
During Communist Albania, an Illyrian origin of the Albanians (without denying "Pelasgian roots",[2] a theory that has been revitalized today[3]) continued to play a significant role in Albanian nationalism, resulting in a revival of given names supposedly of Illyrian origin, at the expense of given names associated with Christianity or Islam.
The trend originated with the 19th century Rilindja, but became more common after 1944, when it became the government's policy to heavily discourage religious given names.
They could be native Albanian words like Flutur ("butterfly"), ideologically communist ones like Marenglen (Marx-Engels-Lenin), or "Illyrian" ones compiled from epigraphy: from the necropolis at Dyrrhachion excavated in 1958 to 1960.
), but a large number are neither simply come from old Albanian secular names (Zogolli, Dushku, Shkoza etc.).
Albanians frequently have surnames that do not match their actual religious identity, often because of recent secularization, religious intermarriage, relatively recent conversion in late Ottoman times (many Muslims have Christian names for that reason, and after the fall of communism, some Albanians with Muslim ancestry have become practicing Christians and vice versa) or the practice of Ottoman Christians taking Muslim names because of Muslim dominance of society during those times.
Another major source of Albanian last names are place names- Albanians sometimes took their hometowns as surnames,[6] and especially when a family moved to another place, they often took their former residence as a surname, leading to somewhat well known last names such as Frashëri, Përmeti, Shkodra, Kelmendi, Shkreli, Delvina, Prishtina, etc.).
For example, the word in Arvanitika (Arbërisht) for "brave" or "pallikari" (in Greek) being "çanavar" (Turkish canavar meaning "monster") or its shortened form "çavar" was pronounced "tzanavar" or "tzavar" giving birth to Arvanitic family names like "Tzanavaras" and/or "Tzavaras".