I learned about this from a section in James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State. Sadly I don't have a specific page number or citation to provide you with. But the

I learned about this from a section in James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State. Sadly I don't have a specific page number or citation to provide you with. But the section talked about how families were given names based on profession (Smith, Baker, Carpenter, .etc), description (Short, Young, etc.), or general location (Glenn, Brook, etc.) and all of this was done to simplify taxation and get a better command of resource extraction. This phenomenon is not unique to the West and was done in China as well.