I. Warming up

(1) What is the article mainly about?
It’s factual piece of writing relating to the history of western family names nd their sources.

(2) What’s the difference between a given name and a surname?
A given name is used to distinguish among individuals while a surname belongs to a family group.

(3) How many famous people who are known by a single name can you think of?
Backham, Shap, Sting, Ronaldo, and Madona.

II. Text analysis

1. Theme

What is the history of western family name? What did surname indicate? How much does a name tell us about a person’s identity or character? What’s the writer’s main purpose?

2. Structure

3. Detailed Analysis

(1) How many surnames are there in England?

There are around 45,000 different surnames in England alone.

(2) Why did the Chinese introduce surnames?

Chinese people introduced surnames to honour their parents.

(3) Why did the Normans want people to use surnames?

They wanted people to use surnames for administrative reasons, as a form of registration for the census and for taxation.

(4) How did invasion affect surnames?

The change of official language would result in the change of names as names are translated into different languages.

(5) What has happened to complicate things in recent years?

The facts of immigration and intermarriage complicate the situation.

(6) What is the writer’ s main purpose?

The writer intends to entertain and to inform the reader about surnames.

(7) How does the writer organize the information?

The writer organizes information chronologically, by following the historical time sequence.

(8) Why does it refer to global migration at the end?

Having looked at the past, the writer moves on to consider the present and future.

III. Reinforcement:

Discussion

(1) How much does a name tell us about a person’ s identity or character?

(2) Would a world in which people had numbers instead of names be better?

(3) If you had been given a different name, which name would you have liked?

(4) If you had to choose an English name, which would it be, and why?