A surname can open a door before its bearer has earned an opinion.

A name can arrive in a room ahead of the person. Where a family is known, the assumption of competence, trust or welcome is in place before anything has been demonstrated, and the same room may be slower to extend it to somebody else. None of that is the bearer’s doing, and all of it is still working. Advantage carried by a name is easy to mistake for a personal quality.

If a door opened unusually easily for you, ask what did the opening. Then use the access for something besides yourself: say a name, make an introduction, back the person who has to knock twice.