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—Where does your surname come from?—the question, asked almost the second we met, startled me. —Llovera is Catalan, comes from wolves, "llops". My ancestors took care or had something to do with wolves.— I responded—I've never given a second thought on my surname or have considered it relevant enough to be included in one of the first questions you ask at the moment of meeting somebody. —Mine is Serbian—, said Matija. —Mine too—, said Nina. —Mine is pure Montenigran—, said Danilo. There they were, introducing themselves beginning by their surname. They came from the only type of country that allows people to recognize each other by the family name, a small and young one: Montenegro. But we weren't in Montenegro. We were sitting at the last table of a live music bar in Ljubljana, the capital of Eslovenia. Those people had travelled 800 kilometres from Montenegro to study a master's degree in International Relations. As I discovered, Ljubljana is packed with bachelor and masters' degree students from the former Yugoslavia: Croatians, Serbians, Bosnians, Montenegrin, Macedonian and citizens of Kosovo. So, those surname presentations are frequent. Their parents were born in the same state, but they didn't. Their identity, in a first superficial glance, is determined by their surnames. But it means so much than just that. It conjures a conflict that took away the lives of more than 100,000 people. —Spanish, eh? So, Catholic... That was the next question on the list to ask: your religion was assumed by your nationality. "If you're from Slovenia or Croatia, you are Catholic; Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, Christian orthodox; Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, Muslim", Matija told me. It was not a question of faith, but of categorization. We got up of that crowded place and followed the Ljubljanica river to another bar. It was a Wednesday. Everyone was on the streets. On our way, we came across friends and colleagues. Slovenian talked in Slovenian, Serbian in Serbian and Montenegrin in Montenegrin, but yet they could understand each other. The sun rose above us, sitting in the sidewalk next to the bus station, eating bureks. And I thought: these people are way more than just a surname.