The reforms of the hat, weights and measures, the calendar, the alphabet, or of surnames are part of a revolution of signifiers orchestrated by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The surname reform was intended to impose on every Turkish citizen the obligation to bear a surname in order to better authenticate people. However, this gain of authentication by the State was relative because of the number of homonyms. This paper is based on the analysis of a civil status register of an Anatolian village, and seeks to answer this question: “Why so many homonyms?” It argues that homonymy supports the making of the family both symbolically and in reality. The 1934 Kemalist reform stumbled on this particular method of making the family, which emphasizes the “same” over the “different.”