Last names tell a story. Your last name could determine your career. It could decide how easily you move through society or alternatively how hard it could be to get ahead. Some last names grow longer and longer as they carry a family story from generation to generation. Others stagger under a double barrel as partners perpetuate their own last names through their children and a hyphen.

So what’s in a last name? A whole lot as Mike Williams discovers in The Why Factor.

(Image: A mixture of surnames from around the world. BBC Copyright)