Serbian name

Names of Latin origin include: e.g. Marko, Anđelka, Antonije, Pavle, Srđan, Marina, Natalija, Kornelije.

[citation needed] As of the 2011 Census, the ten most common surnames in Serbia, in order, were Jovanović, Petrović, Nikolić, Marković, Đorđević, Stojanović, Ilić, Stanković, Pavlović, and Milošević.

Examples include surnames such as Katić, Sinđelić, Nedić, Marić, Višnjić, Janjić, Sarić, Miličić, Milenić, Natalić, Zorić, Smiljić, Anđelić and many others.

[2] Demetrios Chomatenos (Archbishop of Ohrid from 1216 to 1236) registered the naming culture of the South Slavs in Byzantine lands.

In the 11th and 12th century, family names became more common and stable in Byzantium, adapted by the majority of people in Byzantine Macedonia, Epirus and other regions (including women, sometimes even monks), not only aristocrats.

[3] Patronymics ending on -ić, on the other hand, seem to have been the norm by late 14th and early 15th century because nearly all letters of correspondence between Dubrovnik and Serbia and Bosnia from that period contain them.

Due to general lack of safety clans started to form in regions of Montenegro and Herzegovina from 15th century onwards.

Surnames were mostly formed as patronymics (or in some cases matronymics) derived from names of at the time eldest living heads of households rather than distant ancestors, though there were exceptions.

In case of what was then Southern Hungary, Serb suffixes were often intentionally changed by Austro-Hungarian administrators from -ović, -ević and -ić into -ov, -ev, -in and -ski which in their mind sounded less typically Serbian.

This process started around 1817 but was particularly intensified after 1860/61 when Duchy of Serbia and Tamiš Banate was abolished and 1867 when Habsburg monarchy was reformed into Austro-Hungary.

In some regions with Serbian majority which were only liberated during wars of 1912–1918, standardized surnames were finally introduced with the creation of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and recorded for the first time during population census of 1921.