Neil Jenkins was my hero as a kid. It was either him, Neil Armstrong, Neil Sedaka or Neil Diamond, and he was the only one who was on TV and didn’t own a chest wig.
Not a lot of role models for young Neils, unfortunately. I’d better get famous.
This site is very unreliable (I know that for having searched names from my family on it). In this particular case, one of the common variant (about 50 000 people according to another site, as compared to the 236 000 “Martin” in your link), Faure, is mentioned as “non existing or less than 50”
In my post, I specified I was referring to the total number of the variant of the French name for “Smith” , that come with a large number of different spellings : Lefevre, Lefebre ,Lefebure , Lefebvre , Lefeuvre, Le Fevre, Le Favre, Favre, Favreau, Faure, Faurel, Faivre, Fabre (*) and so on. Plus the regional names like Le Goff/Legoff, Ferrier, Hauvre, etc…
(*) The old french name for “smith” is fevre or variants thereof, still surviving in “orfèvre” : goldsmith. Frequently, an article is included in a french name. So, the French equivalent of “Brown” is typically “Lebrun” (“Thebrown”), or the equivalent of Wood is “Dubois” (“Fromthewood”). As a result, Lefevre and Fabre are the same name, with a different spelling, and with or without the article.
Actually, it doesn’t seem particularly surprising to me, for the same reason “farmer” wouldn’t be a very common name. For someone to get a nickname based on a region’s name, he must have left this region, and there must not be too many people coming from there around. There are similarly a number of “Limousin” in France, even though it’s one of the less populated regions, I would assume for this reason.
Or maybe many Frisian emigrated to other parts of the country, because the area was poor?
He could also have visited the region or had some sort of other connection with the region, analogous to Scipio Africanus or Chinese Gordon or Laurence of Arabia.
The Welsh word for smith is gof. There exists a surname Goff (not sure if that’s the origin of it).
Edit–
What do you know… It is.
For that matter, so is Gowan from the related Gaelic word for smith, gobhan.
I wonder too if there was/is a stereotypical idea of what a Frisian is like, either by appearance or by personality/behavior? Maybe some of them were not from Friesland but were somehow likened to Frisians? I really don’t know whether this a likely scenario, and I’m practically certain it is not the source for all of those “De Vries”, but I imagine it could account for some.
Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor is right!
Here’s a note about Millers in the middle ages:
Many places in Europe had laws that required the peasants to grind their grain at their lords mill. The lord levied a tax of 10% of the ground grain. Two of the effects of this system were 1) people ate a lot of porridge, which was made from unground grain and 2) people hated the Miller, whom they viewed as a type of tax collector.
The Miller might be an unfree servant of the Lord of the Manor, called a Villain (ha!). In this case, the Lord kept the profits. Or the Lord might “Farm out” the milling job to a man who paid an upfront fee and kept the flour for his own profit. Millers were characterized as avaricious bastards who squeezed the helpless peasants mercilessly.
Wikipedia seems to think the English surname Gough is related to the Welsh coch (red), rather than Goff… which I suppose is highly plausible since things in Welsh aren’t pronounced anything like you’d expect them to be.
How is goff pronounced?
Throatwarbler Mangrove
(someone had to do it)
I have a pretty uncommon last name. When I was about seven or eight years old, I learned that I was the last male descendant of my family. If I didn’t have any sons, the name would die out. Sons? Me?!?!?!?!? Heavy. I hated girls back then and got very upset. Now I’m happily married and have three sons, plus it turns out there are several other healthy branches of the family, esp. on the West Coast and in Canada. Crisis averted! 
Does anybody have a recommendation for an introductory book on this topic?
Not necessarily - Ahnold was already a public figure (as Mr. Universe) before starting his acting career, so changing his name for the screen might have confused people.
Re: patronymics in Britain - could their prevalence be related to the frequent Norse invasions/occupations of the island? (After 40 years of thinking my last name, “Osborne”, was a good English name, I only recently discovered it’s actually derived from the Old Norse “Asbjørn”.)
True amusing story: Several years ago I shared an apartment with an African-American guy whose last name was Smith. We were having a casual discussion about family names and I mentioned how common it was for surnames to come from professions. He said, “That’s true. My great-grandfather was a blacksmith.” I walked right into that one :smack:
Still true today. When I go home to Ireland my last name is compeltely useless in the city we’re from, because there are so many of us. When introducing myself I use the family nickname which indicates everyone from my great, great, grandfather on down.
If there were more than one “TruCelt” within that nickname, then everyone descended from my Great Grandfather would refer to me as “Our” TruCelt. People outside that group might call me TruCelt from Washington, or “The American TruCelt.” (This assumes there is no other Clann-member TruCelt from America who is older than me or who otherwise outranks me . . .)
It’s pure craziness, I tell you, and easy for a poor American born lady to insult someone unintentionally.
My daughter will likely be referred to as “TruCelt’s girl Celtling” until she does something noteworthy.
The name change was probably the immigrant’s own idea, later attributed to “the authorities”. More about American name change stories.
The only Swedish name related to a profession I have ever come across is Bryggare=brewer, but then again the only person I have heard about called by that name is a Finn so it might just be a translation from Finnish.
I do know a person called Smeds, but that name is probably derived from a farm name.
I’ve lived a long time and worked and travelled to many places, and I have NEVER met a ‘Smith’. For that matter, I’ve never met another woman with my first name, and it’s a fairly common one, though not ‘fashionable’.
When surnames were first adopted, those had to distinguish its carrier from other people with the same first name in the local community. Within a rural community, you would usually have many farmers, but few smiths. Therefore “John the Farmer” was much less of a precise identification than “John the Smith”. Thus in the place where my name originates, farmers more frequently adopted surnames derived from the place where their farm was located, than surnames dnoting their profession.
One of my best childhood friends, believe it or not, was John Smith (middle name Charles). I’ve known lots of other Smiths over the years.
But that is accurate.
You are thinking that what you are used to has always been. Remember that priestly celibacy is a fairly new rule. The Catholic church has had married priests for about twice as long as celibate ones. And like in many professions, it was fairly common for sons of priests to become priests also.
Council of Jerusalem (A.D. 50) to Second Lateran Council (A.D. 1139): 1,089 years.
Second Lateran Council to present: 870 years.