So I’m reading about the Glorious Revolution in Britain in the 1680s at the moment and one the things I notice is how many of the major figures are direct descendents of people alive today who have inherited their name. Most famously Churchill but also Spencer (ancestor of Diana Spencer, aka princess of Wales and her brother) and a couple of others (Darymple and Russell)
So who is the oldest historical figure someone alive today can claim have inherited a name from? An actual name not a title, (so British royal family doesn’t count as their surname is only a century old). Also it must be inherited it via direct line of ancestors not just happen share the same name.
I figure in western europe there is nothing older than late middle ages (that’s when surnames became a thing IIRC so before that you only had titles) but I don’t know about other cultures.
It’s not clear to me what you mean by “inherited”. If a person’s name is Abraham or Sarah, and that person is Jewish, then they are descended from those two first Jews. Would that count?
(Nitpickers might quibble over my assertion that Abraham and Sarah were Jewish, given that the word “Jew” comes from Judah, who was one of their descendants; nevertheless, however one wants to name that family the question is still valid.)
Inherited in sense of the current Winston Churchill he’s inherited the surname name Churchill from his father, who inherited it from his father (THE Winston Churchill) and so on until you reach the famous general John Churchill in the 1600s.
As opposed to someone who is named Smith or Cooper happening to share a name with a historical figure of that name.
My first reply is Confucius, whom I see was already mentioned above by Ludovic
For Western Europe, Charlemagne might be a candidate? Supposedly there are many thousands who can trace their lineage to him, and his surname / nickname, Martel, is common. But I don’t know whether there are any modern Martels who can show that they’re his actual descendants.
To this day, there are people named Cohen or Kohen (or various other spellings in whatever languages), who claim descent from the original High Priests of the old Temple (that is, Aaron according to the Bible). The word Kohain is just Hebrew for “priest” but became a family surname. Likewise, Aaron himself was a descendant (one of many) of Levi, a son of Jacob, and there are people today claiming descent from the Levites, and Levi is a common surname.
But wait, it gets better: Chromosome mapping seems to suggest that these modern people might really be all related to one another, and thus have some common ancestor from way back then. These supposed ancestors (who might or might not actually be the Biblical Aaron or Levi) are called “The Y-Chromosome Aaron” and “The Y-Chromosome Levi”.
Does the Japanese Imperial Family count, as a continuous lineage? I believe they copied Cher and Madonna and decided only to use their first names. I’m a bit confused by the Wikipedia page but they have era names rather than dynasties [maybe].
Unfortunately, my grandfather didn’t know very much about his surnamed family. His father and his grandfather are as far back as we can go. I’ve tried family tree research, but can’t find anything further back than that.
If we’re just talking about descent, if Geni.com can be believed, I descend from Charlemagne, and through him, Arnoul, Bishop of Metz, born circa 582.
They use their given names while they live, including during their reign (e.g., Hirohito, Akihito, Naruhito) but their era is also assigned a name while they still live. Then, when an emperor dies, he is known thereafter by his era name rather than his given name.
(In fact, the Wiki page says that the reigning emperor is never referred to by his given name while he reigns, but is only known as “The Emperor”. Of course, outside of Japan, he is known by his given name.)
Thus, it was known throughout Hirohito’s reign that his era was “Showa”, but only after his death did he become known as “Emperor Showa”. Akihito is still alive, and his era is known as Heisei. When he dies, he will become Emperor Heisei forever after. The current era, Reiwa, was decreed when Naruhito ascended to the throne, and when Naruhito dies, he will become Emperor Reiwa.
All this is described in their various Wikipedia pages, and indeed also in one another’s Wiki pages, e.g.,
If you’re talking about inheritance of surnames then, yes, you’re correct, you can’t trace back to a date before heritable surnames became the norm. This happened at different times in different cultures. but, so far as Europe is concerned, Ireland is among the first cultures to adopt the practice. It becomes common in the 900s, and universal in the 1000s. The invading Normans adopt the practice in the mid-1100s.
So anyone called O’Connor, O’Brian, O’Neill would be a fairly strong contender, since they have inherited their name from a historical figure born in the Tenth (O’Brien, O’Neill) or Eleventh (O’Connor) Centuries.
Churchills are a bad example. John Churchill the first Duke of Marlborough had no surviving sons and the Dukedom went to his daughter who died with no sons and it was inherited by her nephew. The family name from then on was Spencer until nearly a century later one of his descendants changed it to *Spencer- Churchill * which is what it remains.
Sir Winston Churchill was born to a younger son, who dropped the double barrel and went by simply Churchill (Lord Randolph). Churchill’s full name was Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.
So while Winny was a descendant of Jack, the name came in a roundabout way.
Many (maybe the majority) of families in Quebec can trace their surnames (and family trees) back to the first French settlers in the 1600’s. Presumably some can claim a “Louis” (or whoever was king at the time) connection.
Or if your name is Levine, or Levinsohn, or a dozen variations of that.
It does get confusing, though, because there was a point at which some countries used “David Cohen,” & variant spellings as a “John Doe Jewish.”
It shows up in the Jack the Ripper/Whitechapel murders investigations, where there were a couple of Jewish suspects, and a Jewish witness who apparently refused to identify someone, according to police, because he would not accuse another Jew, and as a result, for a number of decades, there was officially a suspect called “David Cohen,” until researchers realized it was a type of “John Doe” moniker.
I have taught religious school for years, and in one class, I had a two students both named Greenberg, not related, one of whom was a Cohen, and one of whom was not, and also a student named Cohn, who was not a Cohen.
You can also not be officially a Kohain/Levite if there was an intermarriage, a marriage to a convert, or a marriage to a divorcee, which is not permitted under the Talmud, but only very Orthodox people follow the rules strictly-- however, Conservative and Reform synogogues that do call Kohainim and Levaim to Torah first will observe the rules about who is and who isn’t-- there isn’t much point in calling those people first otherwise.
I belonged to a very eclectic congregation in southern Indiana that was Reform-affiliated, but I would not ever call a Reform congregation, which was very strict about the rules-- once at a Bar Mitzvah, the family really wanted all the aliyot for family honors, so for the first two, all the Kohainim and Levaim present left the sanctuary.
My current congregation is Conservative-affiliated, but does not follow the rules-- just calls people as “rishon,” and “shtayim.” (First & second, not Kohain & Levite.)
So a person’s surname is not always an indication, but yes, the DNA analysis does seem to hold true, and show that people have done a better job than you’d guess of keeping track.
And moreover, than the original Kohainim/Levaim in the Temple were actually a family, not just a random collection of Jews. That’s the part that interests me the most.
Confucius is going to be hard to beat, if for no other reason than being the most revered ancient figure in the oldest bureaucracy in the world - a lineage considered worth documenting regardless of which dynastic family (or government) was in charge. From the Wikipedia page on Confucius:
Confucius’s family, the Kongs, have the longest recorded extant pedigree in the world today. The father-to-son family tree, now in its 83rd generation,[86] has been recorded since the death of Confucius. According to the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee (CGCC), he has two million known and registered descendants, and there are an estimated three million in all.[87] Of these, several tens of thousands live outside of China.[87]
I trace my lineage to him, as a direct descendant. He had many descendants within a couple generations, which means he was already spread throughout European ancestry pretty quickly due to the exponential growth nature of descent. Now, he lived 1200 years ago. Talking rough numbers, generations 20 years apart, that means there have been 60 generations after him. Those of us with primarily European ancestry have 2^60 or about 100,000,000,000 European slots in our ancestor tree for 60 generations back. Of course there were only about 30,000,000 people in Europe in Charlemagne’s day, so the average person back then appears in 30,000 of our slots – and that’s not discounting for people who died sans issue. Thus each of us has at least about 30,000 separate lines back to him.
Ms. Napier is an avid genealogist. One of the direct ancestors she turned up for me is just a few generations back (and very high confidence). This was a person who was at the time a famous genealogist who had traced her own ancestry to Charlemagne. Thus those of us who reliably descend from that famous genealogist also have an excellent lineage claim.