It is quite annoying to see that insistence on last names or family names in most places. In India, which is a single country but has many different languages

It is quite annoying to see that insistence on last names or family names in most places. In India, which is a single country but has many different languages (22 official and nearly a 1000 unofficial, including dialects) and cultures, I see the same insistence on last name/surname. There are states and districts where mononyms are quite common, but governments insist on first and last name in many forms. I’ve come to believe that those who make up the rules and are in the majority decide everything for others. In India, it’s the people around the national capital who assume that everybody has a last name or that everybody in the country knows Hindi (India has no national language, much to the chagrin of Hindi speakers who seem to believe it is the one). Funnily, I’ve also noticed that the U.S. consulates have a system where they deal with a last name not being available, even when the name has more than one word separated by spaces in it. In such cases, they add “LNU” (Last Name Unknown) in the last name field in visas. In some cases I’ve seen “FNU” (First Name Unknown) too.