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Project Surname was a program developed by the Northwest Territories Council to record a last name for every Inuit living in Canada. The Project was meant to be a successor to the Disc number (sometimes called an E-number) census system, by replacing each identifying disk with a surname that would be entered into census records.

Development
In the 1940's the Canadian government began a process of anglicizing the given names of the Inuit population for census purposes. Simultaneously each individual was given a pressed leather disk that would identify them. This was seen as needed because of the incompatibility of census keeping with Inuit naming conventions. Inuit peoples traditionally do not use surnames, and are instead given a single name at birth which is commonly a name that was also given to an ancestor of the child. Furthermore, the names do not remain static through time, and are changed upon completion However, by the 1960's, calls to abandon the disc system grew as critics began it

In (year), the (name) proposed a system where Inuit could chose a last name that would be entered onto the census record, rather than be given a disk.

Closure
In (year), after protests by (name) against the system, project surname was ended. In total, (number) people were issued surnames.

Controversy
While the move away from Disc number was praised as a move towards humanizing inuit populations in the eyes of the government, Project Surname has been criticized as retaining parts of the Disc system that maintained forced cultural assimilation.

Many last names were bestowed by priests.

Until (year), Inuit families wishing to revert their names to Indigenous spellings or forgo theirs altogether had to pay a fee of $795. The fee was waived after complaints.

The names were often chosen by the patriarch of the family, a process contrary to the matriarchal system used by the Inuit.