I have always wondered this (and I guess it applies to Mac and -Son surnames as well.)
I will use my surname as an example. I am assuming it originated when, at some point long ago, a guy named Roy had a son, and as was the tradition back then, named him “??? Fitzroy.” (Fitz meaning son of, like Mc or Mac and whatnot.)
So here’s the question: Why and when did “Fiztroy” get stuck as the “official surname” of that family? Say the son of Roy was named William Fitzroy; why didn’t William name his son (let’s say) Henry FitzWilliam in the same way his father named him William Fitzroy? Why did that man a thousand years ago or so decide to give his son the same last name as him?
If he were to do that, it would break with the tradition? Why would he want to break with the tradition?
Was there some time period when some deciding authority got all the “Fitz” and “Mac” and “Mc” people together and said “this whole naming thing is stupid, whatever last name you have, your descendents are stuck with it forever, starting now!”
It wasn’t someone named Roy that Fitzroy was the son of. In this case, Roy = King. So one of your great[sup]n[/sup]-grandfathers was most likely a royal bastard.
“Fitz” is Norman origin in orogin, brought to Ireland by the Normans that had lived in what is now known as England. It comes from the French ‘fils de’ meaning ‘son of’ so I guess Fitz and Mc/Mac pretty much mean the same thing.
Missing a cite but from what I can remember (from reading as opposed to actually being there) it all changed around 1300 but was a European change and not someting that touched just countries that used Mc/Fitz/…
From what I can drag up it seems that in the 12th century surnames began to be used in Europe (meaning fixed surnames rather than ‘Paul son of Thomas’ names.
In Britian people were forced to choose a surname so that local government could more easily keep track of people, as having several people with the same first name and no surname in the same town much have been tricky.
Doesn’t the “Fitz” prefix imply illigitimacy? I think I read somewhere that it was often taken by bastard children of the highborn - i.e., “FitzWilliam” was used by descendants of Prince William’s mistress. Noble and royal by-blows often had a special status in society, not quite commoners, but unable to take thier fathers’ names, either.
Personally I hadn’t heard of this until recently and very much doubt that it was the first meaning of the name although I’d like to know at what stage and why it came to mean ‘illegitimacy’.
Most people I asked in the office believed that it meant illegitimacy and none had heard of the ‘son of’ answer !
Re. -son names: In Sweden names are in general heraditary along the male line, but it’s still possible to take the name of your father (or mother) with the suffix -(s)son (or -(s)dotter)).
Most such names stabilised comparatively recently. (Both my parents have -son names, and in both lines the names only go back three generations.)
Keep in mind, it happened at different times in different places. In England, for administrative purposes, people were obligated at some point to choose surnames, which would have been largely useless before that. Society was agrarian, and people didn’t travel much, so even if there were two Williams in town, it was fine to just refer to them by their father’s name or some physical trait.
In Iceland, however, I believe people still go by a given name and a patronymic; surnames in the sense of a family name don’t exist.
The confusion arises from a couple of things. Fitz- means “son of” and does not imply anything about the legitimacy of the name.
However, at one point, a king of England had an illegitimate son and there was some question about what the last name should be. A courtier coined “Fitzroy” for the boy. AFAIK, that was the name’s origin, though it doesn’t necessary follow that someone named “Fitzroy” is a descendant of the king (the name – or one of the ancestors – could have been adoped, for instance).
Approximately 120 years ago, my father’s ancestors emigrated from Finland (Swedish speakers in Finland) to the US. When they hit the US shores, immigration officers required that they choose a surname. Since at the time they were using <father’s name + son> they all picked the same, new, last name, and so I have a last name that most people can’t spell.
Anyway, short story is, as recently as 120 years ago, parts of Scandinavia were still using patronymic names.
My wife’s ancestors (in Norway) decided to stick to a family name around that same time or a little later. In Iceland patronymics are still in use (Bjork Godmundsdottir, for example).