The 1934 surname reform in Turkey made the adoption of a surname mandatory. It is widely considered as the imposition by state institutions of a uniform naming pattern to every citizen in order to better identify and control the people. However, this reform does not imply the principle of immutability of surnames. By analyzing surname changes in the last decades, this paper suggests a reinterpretation of (re-) naming practices and the State-society interactions that happen around them that focuses on individual onomastic choices. The legal framework of surname change is liberal and rests on the principle that the surname should not harm its bearer. Besides, some juridical breaches make it possible to legally legitimize most surname change requests. As a matter of fact, surname change is widely practiced, and its social uses are diverse—sometimes even at the expense of the very function of the surname as an identifier. The paper focuses on one widespread type of surname change: the late adoption of surnames ending in -o?lu (“son of”), that were often abandoned in 1934, though. This tendency reveals dynamics that the name reform wanted to curb: the trend to stress both distinction through surnames and ancestry (be it real or imagined).