Abstract
The paper deals with the main peculiarities of Kazakh family names, their brief characteristics as a historical category performing important social and legal functions. It studies their development from the ancient times and specific features of functioning in the twentieth century focusing on the modern period (1990-2012). The article assigns a special reference to structural models and naming patterns of Kazakh surnames and the problem of their official registration. It gives the results of the conducted pilot content analysis monitoring the viewpoints of Kazakh people in connection with recent trends observed in surname formation.