Surnames are distinctive names that connect you not just to your family but also to your entire ancestral family but being an indication of who they were and the profession or trait from which they started to be known and recognized.
Surnames help other to recognize that ancestry from simply the meaning that they hold. For instance, if you are German and hold the surname Schütze, it gives off that someone in your ancestral lie would have been an archer or a rifleman. Similarly, in french, an ancestry starting from an Archer would have the surname Archier and in Italian would have the surname Sagittario.