Why do you use your surname after your name?

Question:

Why do you use your surname after your name?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Among the Asians(Chinese, Indo-Chinese, Japanese, etc), the prevailing habit is to place your surname Before your first and middle names.
It is a mark of putting your family, it's name and honor above you as the individual.

Among the Europeans, we once had only one name-our given name. But later on, it became more convenient to keep track of people and who they were generally related to by their last names. Napoleon was a big proponent of making everybody get their surnames.