Surname Quotes

In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from. (Anne Enright)

You can't just trot out a brown face or a Spanish surname and expect people are going to vote for your party or your candidate.

Antonio Villaraigosa

It's very hard to step into a job when people are just dismissing you as a pretty face, and saying you got your job only because your surname is McMahon.

Julian McMahon

I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname.

Rachel Weisz

They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.

Elie Wiesel

Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

I wish I could finish stories as fast as you can. I am much obliged to you for the sight of Olivia, and think you have done for her very well; but the good-for-nothing father, who was the real author of all her faults and sufferings, should not escape unpunished. I hope he hung himself, or took the surname of Bone or underwent some direful penance or other.

Jane Austen

No details of Vatsayana is known except the fact that he bore the surname Mallanaga... He was a law giver like Manu or Kauitilya and was anxious to reconcile Dharma, Artha and Kama the three recognized ends of life by emphasizing their equal importance and harmonious blending, and hence it was not possible for him to reduce his work to gross sexual level as did his successors or imitators in the subsequent erotic writing.

Vātsyāyana

There's this common perception that having a famous last name is all you need. A surname may get you a meeting, but if there's no talent you won't get the part.

Lily Collins

I am extremely proud to have the surname Ambani. I am proud to be a Gujarati, and above all, an extremely proud Indian.

Anil Ambani

I entered KC College in 1975. When I came here for my interview, for my admission, every person I spoke to spoke to me in Sindhi. Be it Kundanani, Bhambani, Nichani, Kevalramani... and they also thought that Ambani was the same. For a moment, I thought that I got my admission at KC College because I have a 'ni' in my surname. (Anil Ambani)

I have to go through auditions, and my surname has got me into rooms, but I'll never know if it gets me any jobs. There's a lot of sexism and objectification, and a lot of people put you down.

Oona Chaplin

Tommy Wirkola is Norwegian but has a Finnish surname - he comes from the one of the northernmost countries in the whole of Europe. It was easy working with him. The people in the north are all fairly similar.

Pihla Viitala

I don't have a name - my family doesn't have a name. The law that Mr. Papandreou passed basically says that he considers that I am not Greek and that my family was Greek only so long as we were exercising the responsibilities of sovereign, and I had to go out and acquire a name. The problem is that my family originates from Denmark, and the Danish royal family haven't got a surname.

Constantine II of Greece

Her surname resembled a line from an optometrist's examination chart.

Tom Robbins

When I sought admission to graduate schools, when I applied for fellowships and summer study grants, when I needed a teaching assistantship, my Spanish surname or the dark mark in the space indicating my race-‘check one'-nearly always got me whatever I asked for.

Richard Rodriguez

Head of Christ by Morales, exactly as in the description in the pseudo letter of the Roman Proconsul. Morales well entitled to his surname of Divino... [T]he auburn locks seem only prevented from growing over the countenance by the moiety of the star which forms the glory: everything which can even be conceived as necessary to the formation of a face of perfect beauty, but nothing earthly in the appearance. You could not mistake the head for an Apollo or an Adonis. The eyes, beaming with human beauty, are nevertheless bright with the effulgence of celestial light, and fixed upon no particular object. They seem looking on the world. The nose is exquisitely formed, and the flesh tints seem immortal.

Benjamin Disraeli

When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.

Socrates

Luckily, I was spared bullying, although one kid at school, Dobson, always used to tease me about my surname. He'd say: "Look, it's Fe-Mayall!” One time he wouldn't stop and I thought "I'm going to have to hit him”. So I belted him and he lost his two front teeth, broke his nose and ended up in hospital. I was never picked on again after that!

Rik Mayall