Did Moses have a last name? There is Julius Caesar in the books and Jesus Christ, of course. Can we generally pinpoint that time in history when surnames became standard for most people?
Would you consider someone like Jim of Timbuktoo with his last name being Of ____ to have a valid last name?
I don’t think Caesar or Christ really count as last names in the sense you mean them. If either had had kids (as some people speculate they did) their names wouldn’t have necessarily been passed on. Especially not Christ’s at least. For Europeans, last na mes seem to have come into vogue from the Middle Ages.e
<<There is Julius Caesar in the books and Jesus Christ, of course. >>
Caesar and Christ are both job titles. Christos is Greek for the Hebrew term Messiah (“anointed one”).
Are you speaking of “last names” in the sense of a family name passed down from one generation to another? Or just a loose term for the terms used to differentiate people with the same name?
Corr
I’ll close this thread because this topic has been discussed so recently. I direct any remaining unanswered questions to the earlier thread, When did we get last names?
bibliophage
moderator GQ