Surnames from occupations?

[Patty O'Furniture]

Did names like Abbot(t), Baker, Barber, Butler, Bishop, Carpenter, Farmer, Fisher(man), Gardner, Garrison, Harper, Hunter, Miller, Parker, Parsons, Piper, Smith, Taylor (tailor), Walker, Woodman and many others originate from the family being in the business of the same name? Or perhaps in Ye Olden Days the business was named after the family and just caught on as offspring moved across the country & took the family-named business with them? I've always wondered because my name is in that list.

Whaddayas think?

[DrFidelius]

You're last name isn't 'Hooker' by any chance?

[BigRoryG]

mostly, the surnames are derived from the occupation. Cooper, is an excellent example of this. I confused my friend Dave really well when i told him his ancestor must have been a barel-maker :-)

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"C'mon, it's not even tomorrow yet..." - Rupert

If you need a graphic solution, http:\\talk.to\Piglet

[RealityChuck]

People used the occupation because it was an easy way to differentiate. In a small community, you had to find a quick way to indicate the difference between two people named Edward. So you called one Edward the baker and the other Edward the smith. Eventually, the title became a last name.

Location was also used. "George who lives on the hill" would be different from "George who lives in town". These would be shortened to George Hill and George Towne. Other times, the father was used (Edmund, son of John becomes Edmund Johnson).

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"East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does." -- Marx

Read "Sundials" in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman

[Boris B]

I can't think of too many names that turned into general-use verbs, but I'm sure there are some. One of the few I can think of is a certain Mr. Boycott, who apparently was a non-very-labor-friendly employer, and his disgruntled employees organized an informal ban on his goods. But boycotting things isn't really a profession.

Oh. I thought of another one. Quisling, meaning puppet and/or traitor, from a Norwegian of that name and description.

I thought of another profession-turned-surname. Zil is Turkish for cymbal; a zildjian is a cymbal-maker, but as every drummer knows, there are zildjians and there are Zildjians.

[Doug Bowe]

Someone in Captain Kirk's very distant past may have lived near or had constructed a church.

[Little Nemo]

We have long felt the idea of a surname indicating a family's occupation was correct.

Little Nemo (aka Mike King)

[RealityChuck]

[quote]I can't think of too many names that turned into general-use verbs, but I'm sure there are some. [/quote}

Quite a few, actually; Willard Espy wrote a book listing them.

For instance: gerrymander, bowdlerize, sandwich, diesel, silhouette, mesmerize, and guillotine can all be used as verbs.

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"East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does." -- Marx

Read "Sundials" in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman

[metroshane]

hancock- (hehe- third grade laugh)


come on, that's what you really wanted to ask isn't it?

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We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful--Oscar Wilde

[BobT]

The Dictionary of Surnames lists the two most popular derivations of "Hooker" as being either someone who made hooks for a living or someone lived by a "hook" of a land (such as one created by a river.)

The less desirable meaning of the name started much later.

[Boris B]

I heard that the new meaning of Hooker came from the surname of a Union general (the same fella who lost at Chancellorsville), who supplied his troops with prostitutes. I don't know if I believe it though.

I had no idea that diesel and guilllotine came from people's names! I did know about gerrymander and mesmerize at one point, though. Good list

[torq]

If Abbott and Bishop as family names derive from an ancestor who was one of those things, one hopes they were Protestant (or Anglican... are Anglicans considered "Protestant"?) at the time the name became established. And you really have to wonder about Alexander Pope's family.

Seriously, though, it is much more likely that a particular name derived from an occupation rather than the other way around.

Other than the cases above (some of which are marginal, as they aren't really "professions") the only one I know of that went the opposite direction is Caesar, which I think was a family name before it became a title.

There's also the tradition in Scotland of referring to someone as "The Whatever", because he's the leader of clan Whatever.

[Akatsukami]

To put those enquiring minds at ease, it should be noted that (in Scotland) if a man is Whatever of Whatever, he is referred to as "Whatever of that Ilk". Yes, Virginia, there is such a word.

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"Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away."

[mr john]

You mean whatever is a word? hmmm Virginia Hooker, she must be WAY unattractive. There were 'hookers' before the War of Northern Aggression.They 'hooked ' their clients in. Now I understand Jones and Johnson,and maybe Johnston (from John's town?) but what is Johnstone? Celibacy wasn't always required of the preisthood i think it was around 900 or so that it became a major issue,you gotta wonder about Thelonius Monk's ancestor,and I found one Nun in the phone book. Which leads right to Hancock and Glasscock. The sound Celtic or Gaelic maybe. And did Orville and Wilbers ancestor just make all kinds of things?

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"Pardon me while I have a strange interlude."-Marx

[mipsman]

These are all plausible scenarios but they require an specific generation in which the names were crystallized. Just because dad was a baker or an abbot, why would the next generation necessarily have that appellation? That would also be true with the John"son"'s , Thom"son"'s, Eric"son"'s, etc. Because granddad was Andrew, why would somebody in the second or third generation be called Anderson? There must have been a time when you had to get registered or something. However, a Russian instructor mentioned once that the only time when last names were "handed out" was in the Austrian-Hugarian Empire when unassimilated, last-nameless Jews were given some of their inelegant, more-or-less bigoted names that they are saddled with today.