Georgian Names

Structure & order

[GIVEN] [SURNAME]: e.g. გიორგი მაისურაძე (Giorgi Maisuradze).

• Given name (sakheli, სახელი) comes first; family name (gvari, გვარი) follows.
• One given name plus one inherited family name is the standard modern form; there is no native patronymic slot in everyday address (unlike Russian), though many surnames are historically patronymic in origin.

Given names

Georgian given names draw on several layers:

• Orthodox Christian / biblical: by far the dominant source. Giorgi (George, the patron saint, the most common male name), Davit (David), Mariam (Mary), Iakob (Jacob), Gabriel, Nikoloz (Nicholas), Ketevan, Salome. Nino (the 4th-c. saint who converted Georgia to Christianity) is the most common female name.
• Native Georgian / nature & quality words: Tamar ("date palm"; the celebrated 12th-c. queen), Mzia ("sun"), Vardo ("rose"), Natela ("light"), Khatuna.
• Literary names from Rustaveli's epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin (12th c.): Avtandil, Tariel, Tinatin, Nestan, several with Persian roots, reflecting historical Persian cultural contact.

Gender marking is loose and tendency-based rather than strict: many male names end in -i or -e (Giorgi, Irakli, Davit), and many female names end in -a (Nino, Tamar, Maia, Ana), but there is no obligatory gendered surname suffix as in Slavic languages.

Family names & patronymics

Georgian surnames are formed from patronymics or toponyms plus a regional suffix. The suffix is the single most diagnostic feature of a Georgian name:

The -dze / -shvili split runs roughly west-to-east: surveys of towns along the Kura (Mtkvari) river show -dze dominating in the west and -shvili in the east (e.g. ~76% -dze in Khashuri vs. ~85% -shvili in Kaspi). Surnames are inherited unchanged and are not gender-inflected; a married woman's and a man's surname have identical form.

Historically, the first Georgian surnames are recorded in the 7th–8th centuries (toponymic or patronymic); from the 13th century patronymic surnames spread, becoming near-universal by the 17th–18th centuries. See Surname Formation and Patronymics and Lineage.

How to address someone

• Given name is used among family and friends; full given + surname in formal and written contexts.
• The native polite address particle is -ბატონო (batono) "sir / madam" (gender-neutral), and ქალბატონო (kalbatono) "madam" / ბატონო (batono) "sir", often placed before or after the given name (e.g. batono Giorgi).
• Under long Russian/Soviet rule, Russian-style given-name + patronymic address was widely used among older and official speakers, but it is not the native Georgian pattern. See Russian Names.

Pitfalls for software

• Suffix ≠ patronymic slot. Although -dze ("son") and -shvili ("child") mean son/child, they are frozen into inherited surnames; they are not live patronymics regenerated each generation. Parsing them as a separate patronymic token is wrong.
• Mingrelian / Svan / Laz suffixes are still Georgian surnames. A -ia, -ua, -ava (Mingrelian) or -iani/-ani (Svan) surname belongs to a Georgian citizen, not a foreign one, but flags sub-ethnic/regional origin. (Mingrelian and Svan are endangered, largely unwritten home languages; people bearing these surnames usually have Georgian-language given names.)
• No gender suffix on surnames: do not invent a feminine form (contrast Slavic -ova/-eva).
• Mkhedruli is caseless, so "ALL-CAPS surname" conventions used to detect family names in Latin data do not exist in the native script; romanization is needed before casing heuristics apply.
• Multiple romanizations of the same name are common (Mkheidze/Mkeidze; Giorgi/George/Gigi), since there is no single dominant transliteration standard and Soviet records often used Russian intermediaries.
• -ani is ambiguous: most reliably Svan, but it also appears as a reduced spelling of -iani; treat the longer -iani as the canonical Svan marker.