Family means parents and children and, in a wider sense, other relatives as well. It isn't the name you share with your relatives: that's a surname in English, and on forms and in American English often a last name. The phrase family name also means surname, but family on its own never does.
family: will you get the meaning right?
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a big/close + family; family + dinner/business/members; start a family; surname / last name (not family)
- My whole family gets together at my grandparents' house every New Year's Eve.
- They run a small family business: the father cooks and the two daughters serve customers.
- We're looking for a bigger flat because we'd like to start a family soon.
What changed
First versionPlease write your name and family on the first line of the form.
RevisionPlease write your name and surname on the first line of the form.
Because family name means surname, it's tempting to shorten it to family, and in some languages a word that looks like family does mean surname. But name and family means “your name and your relatives”. On a form, your family name is surname or last name, and your given name is first name.
Sometimes family means children specifically. Start a family means to have children, and the question Do you have a family? is often asked to find out whether someone has children. For more distant relatives, say relatives: I have relatives in Canada.
Your turn
After the wedding, Anna kept her own ___ and didn't take her husband's.
Show the answer
surname — After the wedding Anna didn't take her husband's surname, so the answer is surname. Family means the people you are related to, and with it the sentence makes no sense: Anna kept her own family and didn't take her husband's.
Write about your family. Say how many people there are in it and where you usually all get together.
There are five people in my family, and we usually get together at my parents' country house in summer.
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