The colonial registration process which lists the father and made it acceptable to tag the child at birth to a male by a surname, is designed to identify the father as the person responsible for the bills of the mother and child.

In some cultures like in South Korea, the surname is the first name but even that has to do with identifying the man for liabilities of the mother and child, especially for paying money for expenses related.

In Europe (England included) there was bans-of-marriage, which were announcements in the town square. This was a declaration of the intent to marry. It was made to alert everyone that such and such lady was to be married shortly to such such man. But the idea here was to expose other marital or sexual liabilities that the man or woman may have at the time, especially the man, so that people knew that he would be in a position to legally generate children at an upcoming marriage, and they could object to the wedding by showing that he had children (reproductive expenses) elsewhere.

The aristocratic class (king/queen and relatives) wanted to have nothing to do with the expenses incurred by the serfs' sexual activity. Thus they tagged the father's name to the child to make it easy to identify him for liabilities.