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[GoblinCookie]

Unpleasent? Dystopian? What because I suggested that the richer of the two partners should be used? Or are you refering to keeping the man's surname, like most every society has done for thousands of years? That's a pretty far stretch to go over choice in last names, it's not like I'm suggesting anything unusual. This is what I mean when I say people getting their nickers in a twist.
There's nothing about the system I suggested that is unusual or unworkable. Every sentient creature in DF is already classified by occupation, and some occupations are more valuable than others. Add a number value to each occupation, and when two sentient beings have children the last name with a higher value is given to the child, be it from it's mother or father. Two people with the same value occupation can take from the father. Now you are right in saying that I may have gotten the order wrong, but don't insult me by dismissing this idea altogether. It's far better than hyphenated or mixed clan names and makes a lot more sense than having it chose randomly. Why would the son of a queen take the surname of the low-born farmer she got freaky with? A last name is a title that people have held proudly through many generations, not an arbitrary jumble of words you put after your first name

It is unpleasant and dystopian for pretty much every reason that you have listed and more reasons on top of that!  You also cannot seem to grasp how sexist it is to immediately assume that everyone is going to use the father's surname when everything else is equal.

Add a number value to every occupation that there is?  So somebody is going to have to decide if farmers, or herders, or weavers, or hunters or herbalists or miners are more 'important' even though all of them are equally unpowerful, as I said it is all entirely arbitrary unless we are talking about some kind of difference in hierarchy such as a king vs baron or mayor vs ordinary dwarf whatever.  We can do it by dev fiat, much as the existing positions (not occupations) have a precedence order but that is not the direction in which I wish the game to go in (aka dystopia by dev fiat). 

The reason your system is inferior to a system of hyphenated surnames created upon marriage of two dwarves and then passed on to their children is that it does not allow a clear reading of the actual family relationships.  In my system we can figure out that if two people have the same family surname that means they are closely related, that is because the surnames only last for one generation going out of use with the death of the last child of the couple that initially married and created it.  Your systems means that the surnames wipe each-other out until everybody is all called one surname, at which point the whole point of the mechanic is lost on the player as nobody can tell who is related to whom. 

To clarify, my system works on everyone having three surnames.  One is given to the character upon reaching adulthood (not at birth), it works exactly like the existing surnames dwarves already have (it is random). Another is created when they marry based upon a random splice between the couples own family surnames, this surname is inherited by all their legitimate children. The last is the surname that they inherited from their parents.  Babies do not have a personal surname (as present), they just have the name their parents marriage created and they inherited.

Because the parents themselves have surnames inherited from their parents, which themselves have inherited surnames it allows us to track the descent back to the grandparents, as all the married children with their own marital surnames will have the family surname in common.  In irregular situations (like the queen and the random farmer) we just use one parents personal surname AS the family name for the children, the mother in your case. 

[Madman198237]

But why make it so difficult to trace names???

Choose matri- versus patrilineal descent for every nation/country/civilization or whatever. Between dwarves, humans, goblins, and any and all other generally useless yet moderately not unintelligent races, [i.e., elves, kobolds, etc.] all should perhaps have a preference, as in, humans TEND to have, say, matrilineal cultures, but 1 or 2 out of every ten in your world will be patrilineal, and to varying degrees.
Some cultures will have no male leaders, some will be equal in all but the names (Keep male side's name if applicable. No other effects of patrilineal culture), etc. Preference of race (As in, overall ___lineal, etc.) randomized per world.

[Bumber]

How do you decide which of the surnames to combine?

Urist A-B marries Urist C-D. Are the children's surnames A-C, A-D, B-C, or B-D?

[GoblinCookie]

But why make it so difficult to trace names???

Choose matri- versus patrilineal descent for every nation/country/civilization or whatever. Between dwarves, humans, goblins, and any and all other generally useless yet moderately not unintelligent races, [i.e., elves, kobolds, etc.] all should perhaps have a preference, as in, humans TEND to have, say, matrilineal cultures, but 1 or 2 out of every ten in your world will be patrilineal, and to varying degrees.
Some cultures will have no male leaders, some will be equal in all but the names (Keep male side's name if applicable. No other effects of patrilineal culture), etc. Preference of race (As in, overall ___lineal, etc.) randomized per world.

It is not hard to trace names at all.  Everyone married has the surname that they got from their parents but they also have the surname that was created when they married and which is inherited by children (and shared by their spouse).  Hence we can always trace forwards (spouse/children) and backward (parents), so we can potentially trace things all the way back to Yr0 by tracking backwards using the name inherited from the parents, then the name which the parents inherited from their parents and so on. 

Any system based upon simple inheritance of names (matrilineal, patrilineal, status, random) results in a situation where a ton of unrelated people end up having the same surnames, causing players to be unable to determine lineage since virtually everyone has the same few surnames. 

How do you decide which of the surnames to combine?

Urist A-B marries Urist C-D. Are the children's surnames A-C, A-D, B-C, or B-D?

We combine the parts of the personal surnames of the couple, that is the surnames that exist at the moment.  Then we pass the resulting name onto to their children after their personal surname which is then in turn combined when THEY marry. 

[Bumber]

But which parts are combined? Each couple has four parents, each with a surname they inherited.

Are two of the words paired at random? Or are you saying the marriage surnames are completely random with each generation?

[Putnam]

Adoption of children of unknown parentage by homosexual couples?

[Urist McClown]

But which parts are combined? Each couple has four parents, each with a surname they inherited.

Are two of the words paired at random? Or are you saying the marriage surnames are completely random with each generation?

There are really only two options: paternal first syllable and maternal second syllable, or the other way around. We could then have the naming customs set independently for every culture - always father first, always mother first, random, higher status first, etc.

[SixOfSpades]

There are really only two options: paternal first syllable and maternal second syllable, or the other way around.

There's also relative age to be considered. If the wife [named A CD] is older than her husband [named B EF], then their children could take the surname AB. (or CF, etc.)

We could then have the naming customs set independently for every culture - always father first, always mother first, random, higher status first, etc.

If "higher status" is going to be a thing at all, then it should vary by civilization, and more importantly reflect the overseer's playing style. In the Whip of Ladders, prowess as a warrior might be very prestigious, and so a Skilled Macedwarf might "outrank" a Professional Weaver in terms of naming rights. But if the player has set up a booming textile industry, and is defending the fort with traps instead of an active militia, then that Macedwarf would be looked on as redundant, and his children would instead take the name of his active-contributor-to-society spouse. This might have its problems, however: Suppose the player lets a few kids get born, and then creates an active militia. Would those kids born later take the name of their Macedwarf father, while their full siblings are named after their Weaver mother?

Another approach would be to have male children take their father's surname, while girls take their mother's. This is the easiest approach to "clan" lineages that I can see, although given how rarely dwarves marry, after a few generations everyone in the fort will all have one of the same 12 names.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Why would the actions of a single outpost dictate the naming style of a world spanning empire with thousands of years of culture? Seems a bit extreme.

[SixOfSpades]

Why would the actions of a single outpost dictate the naming style of a world spanning empire with thousands of years of culture?

Oh, they wouldn't--they just influence the naming style of infants born in that fort. For example, according to a given civilization's social hierarchy randomly generated at worldgen, Furnace Operators might be really hot stuff back at the Mountainhome . . . but if (for whatever reason) you've chosen an embark site with no metals, your other dwarves would be wise to treat your hapless Furnace Operators as little better than Fish Dissectors or Wax Workers, in that fort. This would have no effect on social constructs throughout the rest of the civ.

[SixOfSpades]

Another possibility.

Male infant's name: [Personal name] . . [Elder parent's personal name][Personal name of patrilineal ancestor]
Female infant's name:  [Personal name] . . [Elder parent's personal name][Personal name of matrilineal ancestor]

Every baby's first name is random (perhaps weighted in favor of names not currently used by other dwarves in the fort, so the player doesn't have to keep track of five Likots), every middle name is the first name of whichever parent happens to be older (so all siblings will have the same middle name), and every last name is their same-sex clan lineage, stretching all the way back to worldgen, honoring those who were the first of their kind. (To be clear: Every boy takes his father's last name, while every girl takes her mother's.)

It's not perfect, and doesn't have some of the more flavorful nuances mentioned earlier in this thread, but it respects diverse individual names, cohesive nuclear-family names, and ancestral family names, all in a way that the computer can very easily calculate, with no messy gender bias or arbitrary "social standing" problems.

[Timeless Bob]

This is an interesting discussion - I'm using a Clan naming convention in my current Dwarfopoly fortress that applies four basic rules to determine the Clan name.  The gender of the current ruling monarch (assumed to be a Clan of the greatest Prestige), determines whether names are patrilinial or matrilineal.  However, that only applies to dwarves who get married (or arrive married in the case of migrants).  Unmarried dwarves not otherwise related to a Clan are considered to be free agents, able to be chosen by anyone in the DF community to be "dorfed".  In fact, "dorfed" individuals become their own clan, so that if and when they marry and have children, so long as their spouse has less prestige (or is Clanless), that Clan name is inherited by them as well.  The third way for a Clan to begin is for a Clanless individual to make an artifact. (Those in Clans who create an artifact add that prestige to their pre-existing Clan, keeping the pre-existing Clan name.)  The fourth rule applies to world-gen nobles (barons, counts, and dukes).  Each of the dwarves who have that position are given a Clan name which their spouses and children will also inherit.  If any of them emigrate to a current fortress, they are renamed as appropriate.

So far, I've played six-ish years, and a number of Clans

The entire idea for Clans in this game is to follow the bloodlines of the "important people" of the world.  These are the ones who generally pointed out in Legends mode, so tracking the lives of each becomes much more intuitive when family names are involved.  I'd suggest that secondary names not be used at all unless there's a repeat of the name in the data base for that site.  If we look at names in general, there's only the need for second, third or fourth names when the first is inadequate to specify an individual.  John II (or "Little John", John Jr., ect...) is only required when there are more than two Johns being referenced in the same time/space locale, or to add entitlement to an individual.  "Alexander of Scarsbourough" or "Alonzo Goblinslayer" for instance.  Surnames are not really required otherwise.  Usually these names are required when the question is asked, "Which one?" As in, do you mean Alonzo the butcher down the street, or the town's founder, Alonzo?  I would imagine that nobles could take on the site name as their surname, making a baron Tulon become Baron Tulon Sitebridge, for instance, if his barony was "Sitebridge".  Count Sitebridge would also work, making the surname be about relative position unless a previous surname was already in place.  "Count Alonzo Goblinslayer of Sitebridge" for instance, would be easily understandable - as would Count Alonzo Sitebridge the Goblinslayer.  In the first case, he was "Goblinslayer" before he was "Count of Sitebridge" and in the second example, he was the Count of Sitebridge first.  Easy.

[GoblinCookie]

But which parts are combined? Each couple has four parents, each with a surname they inherited.

Are two of the words paired at random? Or are you saying the marriage surnames are completely random with each generation?

The marriage surnames are essentially random with each generation, because it is the random personal surnames (what we have at the moment) that are combined to make the marital/nuclear family name; the only difference here is that they are hidden in the code until the child reaches maturity.  While there is no carryover of the names over three generations, it is instead possible to track the lineage of the family names because the married couple keep on using the name they got from each of their immediate parents IN ADDITION TO the name their own nuclear family uses. 

This avoids the issue of gender and status, but also avoids the bigger issue by which due to names having to be eliminated somehow we end up with everyone using one of a handful of names, so the whole thing becomes useless since two people with the same surname can not be inferred to be closely related (basically real-life problem).

This is an interesting discussion - I'm using a Clan naming convention in my current Dwarfopoly fortress that applies four basic rules to determine the Clan name.  The gender of the current ruling monarch (assumed to be a Clan of the greatest Prestige), determines whether names are patrilinial or matrilineal.  However, that only applies to dwarves who get married (or arrive married in the case of migrants).  Unmarried dwarves not otherwise related to a Clan are considered to be free agents, able to be chosen by anyone in the DF community to be "dorfed".  In fact, "dorfed" individuals become their own clan, so that if and when they marry and have children, so long as their spouse has less prestige (or is Clanless), that Clan name is inherited by them as well.  The third way for a Clan to begin is for a Clanless individual to make an artifact. (Those in Clans who create an artifact add that prestige to their pre-existing Clan, keeping the pre-existing Clan name.)  The fourth rule applies to world-gen nobles (barons, counts, and dukes).  Each of the dwarves who have that position are given a Clan name which their spouses and children will also inherit.  If any of them emigrate to a current fortress, they are renamed as appropriate.

So far, I've played six-ish years, and a number of Clans

The entire idea for Clans in this game is to follow the bloodlines of the "important people" of the world.  These are the ones who generally pointed out in Legends mode, so tracking the lives of each becomes much more intuitive when family names are involved.  I'd suggest that secondary names not be used at all unless there's a repeat of the name in the data base for that site.  If we look at names in general, there's only the need for second, third or fourth names when the first is inadequate to specify an individual.  John II (or "Little John", John Jr., ect...) is only required when there are more than two Johns being referenced in the same time/space locale, or to add entitlement to an individual.  "Alexander of Scarsbourough" or "Alonzo Goblinslayer" for instance.  Surnames are not really required otherwise.  Usually these names are required when the question is asked, "Which one?" As in, do you mean Alonzo the butcher down the street, or the town's founder, Alonzo?  I would imagine that nobles could take on the site name as their surname, making a baron Tulon become Baron Tulon Sitebridge, for instance, if his barony was "Sitebridge".  Count Sitebridge would also work, making the surname be about relative position unless a previous surname was already in place.  "Count Alonzo Goblinslayer of Sitebridge" for instance, would be easily understandable - as would Count Alonzo Sitebridge the Goblinslayer.  In the first case, he was "Goblinslayer" before he was "Count of Sitebridge" and in the second example, he was the Count of Sitebridge first.  Easy.

I don't think we should actually use the hero/great perosn's firstname (babyname) in order to trace lineage backwards because it results in too many great people with the same name, meaning we cannot determine lineage.  Instead what we should do I think is promote the personal surname of the great person (not their own family's name) into a special hero-name which is then hyphenated with their descendants first name.  So Alonzo Goblinslayer's personal name is Goblinslayer, being the random combination of two words from the dictionary it is reliably unique, when he distinguishes himself in some fashion that is suitable for that civilization, Goblinslayer then becomes a special heroname.

So Alonzo Goblinslayer's daughter Alath Hammerrighteous becomes Alath-Goblinslayer +[Hammerrighteous] +[Family Surname] +[Marital Surname], the hyphenated hero-name is inherited without regard for the other surnames.  The key thing here is that some hero names have a greater number of 'greatness points' attached to them and in order to yourself create a new hero name you have to outmatch the accomplishments of the person to whom that name is tied.  If Alath-Goblinslayer outranks her own father then she continues to be called Alath-Goblinslayer but all her children will be called Urist-Hammerrighteous.  The exception would be if she marries someone whose own hero name outranks her own names score, since if two folks with heronames reproduce the highest ranking heroname is inherited. 

[SixOfSpades]

So Alonzo Goblinslayer's daughter Alath Hammerrighteous becomes Alath-Goblinslayer +[Hammerrighteous] +[Family Surname] +[Marital Surname], the hyphenated hero-name is inherited without regard for the other surnames.

WHOA, hold on there. So each dwarf could potentially have 1-23 + [45] + [67] + [89] name elements, even before they attain a noble rank, combat title, and "creator of ☼artifact☼"? DF is already laboring under its eye-glazing walls of text, there's no need to compound that by making every single name take half a paragraph.

. . . the random personal surnames are combined to make the marital/nuclear family name; the only difference here is that they are hidden in the code until the child reaches maturity.  While there is no carryover of the names over three generations, it is instead possible to track the lineage of the family names because the married couple keep on using the name they got from each of their immediate parents IN ADDITION TO the name their own nuclear family uses.

Why is making each adult dwarf carry around 2 different family names an improvement on the flat-out statement "She is the child of Asen Dustcastle and Tholtig Pulleywhips"? Surely that's enough to track ancestry? Also, what's the point of hiding names until adulthood?

This . . . avoids the bigger issue by which due to names having to be eliminated somehow we end up with everyone using one of a handful of names, so the whole thing becomes useless since two people with the same surname can not be inferred to be closely related (basically real-life problem).

Very true, although personally I'd rather see the overhaul go deeper, to dwarven cultural mores and personal ethics, instead of being limited to dwarves making new names for themselves. Yeah, seeing 'hero' dwarves start their own clans would nice, but it doesn't address the much deeper problem, that only about 10% of dwarves ever have children. Your entire population could be named Lobsterpaddled, until a few battle-lords & Legendary craftsdwarves create some new surnames . . . that's all well and good, but it does nothing to change the fact that everybody's friggin' inbred. I think it's much more important to greatly loosen marriage/breeding restrictions, at least for dwarves who currently have no actively procreating siblings. After all, we are talking about a race of creatures who would rather see the extinction of their entire SPECIES than overlook an eleven-year age difference.

The gender of the current ruling monarch determines whether names are patrilinial or matrilineal.

So, if a Queen dies and is succeeded by a King, the older siblings in a family will be named after their mother, while the younger ones will take their father's name? To me, it seems less awkward, and far more flavorful, to establish a handful of naming conventions, and at worldgen, each civilization chooses one. A player could get a different name style with every fort (at least for a while), but each fort would always be consistent.

I don't think we should actually use the hero/great perosn's firstname (babyname) in order to trace lineage backwards because it results in too many great people with the same name, meaning we cannot determine lineage.  Instead what we should do I think is promote the personal surname of the great person (not their own family's name) into a special hero-name which is then hyphenated with their descendants first name.  So Alonzo Goblinslayer's personal name is Goblinslayer, being the random combination of two words from the dictionary it is reliably unique, when he distinguishes himself in some fashion that is suitable for that civilization, Goblinslayer then becomes a special heroname.

That's rather confusing. Could you give a discrete multi-generational example?


For instance, here's how a family tree with my "minimalist" structure would look. Let's say we start at the beginning of time, Year 1. Consider four dwarves: Ezum (Hame), Urist (Dagger), Tobul (Canyon), and Oddom (Cloister). Those are their entire names. Ezum marries Urist, while Tobul marries Oddom.
Children are born. Although all 4 parents are precisely the same age (what with Creation and all), the husband Ezum has the appearance of a dwarf who is sixty-seven years old, to his wife's fifty-nine. So their children will take his first name for their second name: Otik Ezum (Sheen, daughter of Ezum), Lolok Ezum (Granite, son of Ezum), etc. Meanwhile, in the other family, it is the mother who looks older, so the children take her name: Rodem Tobul (Pelt, daughter of Tobul), Libad Tobul (Praise, son of Tobul), etc. All siblings have the same patronymic/matronymic second name.
The third generation--grandchildren. Otik Ezum marries Libad Tobul. Because Otik is older, the children take her first name for their second name . . . which is now their middle name, because it's time to bring in clans. Each child is given a third name that is either strictly matrilineal or strictly patrilineal: The grandchildren are named Eral Otikoddom (Vessel, son of Otik, of the line of Oddom), Kadol Otikurist (Gem, daughter of Otik, of the line of Urist), Mozib Otikoddom (Swallow, son of Otik, of the line of Oddom), etc.
The fourth generation--great-grandchildren. Kadol Otikurist marries a dwarf from another family, named Rith Zustdatan (Bell, son of Zust, of the line of Datan). Rith is older than Kadol, so their children are named Zuglar Rithdatan (Ship, son of Rith, of the line of Datan), Umoz Rithurist (Rampage, daughter of Rith, of the line of Urist), etc. Each male newborn takes their father's third name (or their paternal grandfather's first name, if their father has no third name), and each female newborn takes their mother's third name (or their maternal grandmother's first name, if their mother has no third name).

As far as name diversity goes, this plan has its upsides and downsides. The upside is that each married couple will (probably) preserve two separate lines of ancestry (male and female), thus doubling the number of family names running around the fort. On the downside, lineages will be broken if a father has only daughters, or a mother only sons.

The key thing here is that some hero names have a greater number of 'greatness points' attached to them and in order to yourself create a new hero name you have to outmatch the accomplishments of the person to whom that name is tied.

I quite agree with this. Warriors, artifact creators, nobles, the first of their kind, and other historical figures should have a "Legacy" variable that increases with their deeds, and decreases with the passage of time (with other mitigating factors, of course, like books being written about them or having many/few descendants bearing their name), and living dwarves whose Legacy exceeds that of their ancestors may choose to "overrule" their existing clan names to start their own. Perhaps some dwarves will choose to "revive" a lost lineage (for example, a male dwarf who had a great male ancestor, but the descendant did not inherit the ancestor's name because at one point there were no male heirs), or perhaps they'll all just be random.

[GoblinCookie]

WHOA, hold on there. So each dwarf could potentially have 1-23 + [45] + [67] + [89] name elements, even before they attain a noble rank, combat title, and "creator of ☼artifact☼"? DF is already laboring under its eye-glazing walls of text, there's no need to compound that by making every single name take half a paragraph.

Yes, I admit that is a concern, that's why we should definitely get rid of the combat titles because they are basically redundant once we have hero names, the result of this naming system does not result in longer names than the combat names give at present.  However it is still the best system since the text is never redundant, while with simpler surname systems we end with lots of basically unrelated people with the same surname.  While result is shorter, it is also pointless since it reveals no information about family relationships, so we are better off with the Status Quo.

Why is making each adult dwarf carry around 2 different family names an improvement on the flat-out statement "She is the child of Asen Dustcastle and Tholtig Pulleywhips"? Surely that's enough to track ancestry? Also, what's the point of hiding names until adulthood?

Two reasons, one is because it is shorter.  The second is that it allows us to tell that Asen Dustcastle and Tholtig Pulleywhips are married to eachother as well as having a number of children at a glance. 

Hiding names makes sense from the POV of making the names not entirely random but reflecting the personality of the individual in some fashion. It does not make sense for babies to have those names at birth because nobody (should) know what they are like yet. 

Very true, although personally I'd rather see the overhaul go deeper, to dwarven cultural mores and personal ethics, instead of being limited to dwarves making new names for themselves. Yeah, seeing 'hero' dwarves start their own clans would nice, but it doesn't address the much deeper problem, that only about 10% of dwarves ever have children. Your entire population could be named Lobsterpaddled, until a few battle-lords & Legendary craftsdwarves create some new surnames . . . that's all well and good, but it does nothing to change the fact that everybody's friggin' inbred. I think it's much more important to greatly loosen marriage/breeding restrictions, at least for dwarves who currently have no actively procreating siblings. After all, we are talking about a race of creatures who would rather see the extinction of their entire SPECIES than overlook an eleven-year age difference.

What are 'clans' in this context?

That's rather confusing. Could you give a discrete multi-generational example?

In Yr0 we start off with two dwarves, Yellow Goblincookie and Black Sixspades.  When our couple marry their marital name is decided as  Goblinspades, so our couple are now called Yellow Goblinspades Goblincookie and Black Goblinspades Sixspades.  They then have a child which is called Purple Goblinspades, once that child grows up it gains a personal surname, becoming Purple Goblinspades Hammerrighteous.  That child goes on to carry out great deeds, causing the personal surname Hammerrighteous to be promoted into a hero name.

Purple Goblinspades Hammerrighteous goes on to marry another distinguished individual, Yellow-Inkrinsed Inkkind Wonderhome. Yellow-Inkrinsed inherited it's heroname from it's heroic parent, Brown Inkrinsed, it's personal surname is Wonderhome and it's parental family surname is Inkkind.  The marital name for the couple is Wonderhammer so become as a result of their marriage Purple Wonderhammer Goblinspades Hammerrighteous and Yellow-Inkrinsed Wonderhammer Inkkind Wonderhome. 

A child is born to them, because Purple-Hammerrighteous's hero-name outranks that of Yellow-Inkrinsed the child is called Green-Hammerrighteous Wonderhammer. When the child grows up it becomes Green-Hammerrighteous Wonderhammer Elfslayer, the latter is it's personal surname.  Green-Hammerrighteous then marries White Breadtaken Vinebelly, this causes it to become Green-Hammerrighteous Wonderhammer Elfbelly Elfslayer; the longest name possible.  The name breaks down to [First Name]+[Hero Name] [Family Surname] [Marital surname] [Personal Surname]. 

For instance, here's how a family tree with my "minimalist" structure would look. Let's say we start at the beginning of time, Year 1. Consider four dwarves: Ezum (Hame), Urist (Dagger), Tobul (Canyon), and Oddom (Cloister). Those are their entire names. Ezum marries Urist, while Tobul marries Oddom.
Children are born. Although all 4 parents are precisely the same age (what with Creation and all), the husband Ezum has the appearance of a dwarf who is sixty-seven years old, to his wife's fifty-nine. So their children will take his first name for their second name: Otik Ezum (Sheen, daughter of Ezum), Lolok Ezum (Granite, son of Ezum), etc. Meanwhile, in the other family, it is the mother who looks older, so the children take her name: Rodem Tobul (Pelt, daughter of Tobul), Libad Tobul (Praise, son of Tobul), etc. All siblings have the same patronymic/matronymic second name.
The third generation--grandchildren. Otik Ezum marries Libad Tobul. Because Otik is older, the children take her first name for their second name . . . which is now their middle name, because it's time to bring in clans. Each child is given a third name that is either strictly matrilineal or strictly patrilineal: The grandchildren are named Eral Otikoddom (Vessel, son of Otik, of the line of Oddom), Kadol Otikurist (Gem, daughter of Otik, of the line of Urist), Mozib Otikoddom (Swallow, son of Otik, of the line of Oddom), etc.
The fourth generation--great-grandchildren. Kadol Otikurist marries a dwarf from another family, named Rith Zustdatan (Bell, son of Zust, of the line of Datan). Rith is older than Kadol, so their children are named Zuglar Rithdatan (Ship, son of Rith, of the line of Datan), Umoz Rithurist (Rampage, daughter of Rith, of the line of Urist), etc. Each male newborn takes their father's third name (or their paternal grandfather's first name, if their father has no third name), and each female newborn takes their mother's third name (or their maternal grandmother's first name, if their mother has no third name).

As far as name diversity goes, this plan has its upsides and downsides. The upside is that each married couple will (probably) preserve two separate lines of ancestry (male and female), thus doubling the number of family names running around the fort. On the downside, lineages will be broken if a father has only daughters, or a mother only sons.

It does not matter what the basis we use to eliminate the name, the result is the same.  While we may, by coming up with a mechanism for adding in new names, that does not solve the problem.  The problem is that you cannot conclude any relationship based upon the fact two people share the same surname.

I quite agree with this. Warriors, artifact creators, nobles, the first of their kind, and other historical figures should have a "Legacy" variable that increases with their deeds, and decreases with the passage of time (with other mitigating factors, of course, like books being written about them or having many/few descendants bearing their name), and living dwarves whose Legacy exceeds that of their ancestors may choose to "overrule" their existing clan names to start their own. Perhaps some dwarves will choose to "revive" a lost lineage (for example, a male dwarf who had a great male ancestor, but the descendant did not inherit the ancestor's name because at one point there were no male heirs), or perhaps they'll all just be random.

I am separating the two systems.  It does not matter if everybody ends up with the same hero-name because we can track the actual lineage using the other two surnames.  The key thing is that heroes can themselves can have heronames, allowing us to zero in on the greatest people in history because they will be named after the personal surname of a previous great person.