History
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. The South Slavs, however, maintained the tradition of only giving a personal name, sometimes with a Patronymic. There are only 2 cases of family names used by South Slavs during this time; Bogdanopoulos and Serbopoulos, both Serbian names with the Greek suffix -opoulos (όπουλος, originating in Peloponnese in the 10th century)
In older naming convention which was common in Serbia up until mid 19th century a person's name would consist of three distinct parts: the person's given name, the patronymic derived from father's personal name, and the family name, as seen in for example in the name of language reformer Vuk Stefanović Karadžić.
Read more about this topic: Serbian Given Names
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