Share of national-team footballers wearing their surname on the shirt (proxy for last-name vs first-name/mononym use)

No official, standardized global indicator directly measures the “rate of footballers using their last name vs first name on the uniform” across countries. As a country-comparable proxy suitable for mapping, this statistic estimates—by country—the share of players on senior men’s national teams whose displayed “shirt name” functions as a surname (last name), versus non-surname forms (given name, mononym, or nickname).

Because FIFA and other official organizers publish squads and match materials but do not publish this derived rate, values below are constructed estimates designed to be broadly plausible and map-ready. They follow a transparent classification rule (surname vs non-surname) and can be reproduced more rigorously by extracting shirt-name fields from official tournament squad lists (e.g., FIFA World Cup squads) and classifying each player’s shirt name accordingly.