Did they change their names later or were they kept as a point of pride? Or to put it more simply, which names were insulting and what did they mean?
All true enough… but when did last names become more or less permanent and passed on from father to son, whether or not the descriptions fit?
I see how John the village blacksmith became known as John Smith… but when did it become standard for John Smith’s SONS to keep the last name Smith, even if they themselves became millers or weavers or carpenters?
Similary, it’s easy to see why John’s son Robert might be known as Robert Johnson. But at what point did Robert’s sons kids start retaining the name Johnson?
It’s easy to see why a tall fellow named Edward might be known as Edward Long, or why a dark-skinned fellow named Charles might be known as Charles Brown. But at what point did it become standard for Edward’s much shorter kids or Charles’ much paler kids to keep the names Long and Brown?
Just to mention that roman names might be off topic since stable last names didn’t reappear in Europe until the late middle-age.
Just wanted to make clear that there hasn’t been an uninterupted use of family names in western Europe since the Romans.
Also : having been brought up in a very rurel area, I’ve seen two examples of nicknames ending up being used as a family name. The first one was just the nickname of a specific individual, but everybody used it to refer to him (only out of his presence as my father accidentally discovered).
The second is more interesting because it was passed down for several generations. The grandfather or great-grandfather of one of my mother’s cousins got white hair very early hence was nicknamed “White” (Le Blanc in French). This cousin and his family were still refered to by this name two or three generation later (and probably still are). More importantly, most people didn’t know it wasn’t his real name, and of course didn’t know the origin of the name. I suspect that in another era without precise written records, “Leblanc” would eventually have displaced the previous name.
Well, one example is Goldwater. “Goldwater” = urine, get it? Oh, those wacky anti-Semites…
The Highlands of Scotland were one of the last areas in the West to adopt permanent surnames, and it possible to watch this process occurring. John McPhee, an American writer, lived for a time on his ancestral island of Colonsay in the Hebrides, in a home rented from a crofter named Donald McNeill. He was never called that, though; he was called “Donald Gibbie” after his father, Gilbert McNeill. Who was apparently called “Gilbert Donald”, after his father. Other people were called after their occupations or homes: “Angus the Post” was the mail carrier, and “Andrew Oransay” farmed the small adjoining island of Oransay. McPhee noted that almost all of the native-born residents were named “McNeill”, “McDonald” or “McPhee” - the three clans that had historically possessed the island - so those surnames were useless to distinguish the different Donalds, Andrews, and Johns.
This is exactly the reason and origin of Western surnames. And the names fall into exactly the same patterns: patronymics (“Lyndon Johnson”), occupational (“Sam Shepherd”), geographical (“Catherine Middleton”) and nicknames (“Betty White”).
Best answer I’ve seen: When governments started collecting taxes regularly.
Many Afghans, esp. out in the sticks, also still use only one name.
<nitpick>
Actually, ‘White’ as a surname is usually an occupational one.
It comes from “whitesmith” (tin smith) which was a common occupation in middle Ages towns. Just as the surnames ‘Black’ (from blacksmith), ‘Silver’ (from silversmith) and ‘Gold’ (from goldsmith).
Just plain ‘Smith’ is most common, because every small village had their smithy where horses were shod, metal farm implements were made or fixed, etc. Since there was only one in small villages, the name for them became just ‘Smith’. In larger towns, there were multiple smiths, and they specialized in specific metals. They couldn’t all be given the name ‘Smith’. So they got names like ‘Black’, ‘White’, ‘Silver’, & ‘Gold’ based on their specialized occupation.
</nitpick>
I’ve always wondered why “Farmer” isn’t a much more common last name.
Because nearly everybody was a farmer in most villages, so it wouldn’t have been very unique. So instead they mostly got names that identified where their farm was. Thus all the last names with -field, -dell, -green, etc. in the name.
I thought it was interesting in the book / TV miniseries “The Pillars of the Earth” (essentially about the building of a fictional cathedral in England during the time of the Anarchy), the first Cathedral builder is known as “Tom Builder”, but his son is known as “Alfred Tomson.” I figure at least in England people have had names like that since before 1000 AD, but as has been said they weren’t really static. Presumably if Alfred had gone to some other town where his father was unknown but he himself was known primarily as being a master builder, his surname would have changed.
There’s also Bauer as in Jack Bauer on 24. Bauer is German for “farmer.”
I’ve always wondered how exactly Abbott came to be a fairly common last name.
It’s thought to refer to people who worked for the abbott, or possibly people who were thought to conduct themselves like an abbot. It could also be for children of the abbot, vows of celibacy notwithstanding. I wonder if abbotts ever took in and raised orphaned or abandoned children? That’s another potential source, IMO.
Not abbots per se, but monasteries often did.
So Costello WASN’T involved?
I am surprised.
There were a lot of fine distinctions among farmers. The owner, the lease holder, the farm manager, farmers with full rights, ones with only a temporary lease, hired farm workers, etc. So there are a lot of terms for someone who is sort of a farmer. And these led to various last names: Husmann, Cotter, Crofter and on and on. Lots of countries and each with their own terms.
But is the ancient Roman naming practice really analogous to family names today in most of the Western world?
Given the nature of Nordic social organization, though, if you were remembered in a saga there was a good chance you belonged to the elite anyhow, even if that merely meant you were not of peasant/bondsman majority.
The descriptive names are really epithets or possibly compliments. One of my favorites is Thorfinn Karlsefni, who is supposed to have made a voyage to North America around the same time as Leif Erikson. I learned only a few months ago that the epithet ‘Karlsefni’ means “The Stuff A Man Is Made Of”.
Hari Seldon, IIRC what little Old Norse I learned in an upper division linguistics class, the President’s patronymic was probably Finnbogadottir; her father, in the nominative case, or, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the quiescent state of being merely mentioned, would be Finnbogi. Old Norse, and modern Icelandic, which isn’t too different from it, are fascinating languages in many ways.
I was in Cameroon just as last names were starting to “stick,” and it was an interesting process to see.
People would pick up last names from all kinds of things- the company they worked for (I once met a “Amadou Voila Voyage,” named after a very bad bus company), their appearance (I knew a Bouba Appareil- Camera- so named because his eyes bugged out like a camera lens), where they live in town, something notable about them (lots of Alhajis among the upper class), or after their most well-known relative. Since a lot of development was just hitting, a lot of people were just starting to get official IDs, school records, and the like. It was funny to think that a lot of these fairly random names were going to end up being passed down, and 500 years from now some poor Cameroonian is going to wonder why his last name is “Camera.”
It still wasn’t that unusual to only have one name. I knew a guy who had to travel to the US on work, and he had a hell of a time getting a visa with only one name.