Neither Herrera nor Herrero are particularly common in Spanish, but then, occupation names are relatively uncommon in Spanish when compared with patronimics.
This map is only for Spain, but compare 836,325 Martínez or 874,599 López with 58,464 Herrero, 67,119 Herrera, 55,395 Ferrer and 11,259 Ferrero (Spanish, Spanish, Catalan and Galego). The listings include both lastnames, that is, Carlos Martínez Martínez would be counted twice in the Martínez; Juan Herrera López would count both for the Herrera and the López.
The Basque version doesn’t even exist, unless you count Suárez (120,655) as being a deformation of Suarotz - my understanding is that it’s “Son of Suero,” a name that isn’t used any more but which was relatively common in the Middle Ages. Of course, if it happens to have both origins it will be very difficult to separate them. Ochoa, a very common Basque lastname, clocks in at 13,568 with the other “Johnny Basque” lastnames being even less common, so it seems unlikely to me that Suárez will be this extended if it came from Basque.
Very few people even knew bodybuilding existed - and as a matter of fact, he did some work as Arnold Strong before deciding that people were going to learn how to spell his name dangitall.
…which was the name of the farm the family came from, almost certainly. Surnames were adopted fairly late in the game in Scandinavia, although some family names were used informally before that; patronymics were the usual way of telling one Jon or Kari from another, as they still are in Iceland. When the idea that a family should have a single surname, passed down unchanged from father to children, finally caught on, some families just “froze” the patronymic, leading to an awful lot of Johanssens and such. Others took the name of the family farm, or their local village, as a surname. Very few took a word related to their occupation.
My husband’s family name means “hilltop” in Norwegian… which as you can guess is a relatively common farm name in a mountainous country, and as such is a relatively common surname. In fact his parents, before marriage, each had a different variation of the same word as a last name.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, because I think it is interesting.
I lived in rural northern Cameroon just at at time when people were beginning to adopt last name. In many ways the villages I lived around resembled medieval villages. The villages were just getting big enough and the state was getting strong enough that people’s identifiers were beginning to stick as genuine last names. I still have lots of friends who simply had one name. I was close to a man, “Souley” who worked for the embassy and had a hell of a time getting a US visa with his one name. Anyway, it was really interesting to watch this process at work.
If someone was a relative of someone important in the village, they’d use a patronym, For example, you might ask someone “Which Mairamou are you talking about?” and they’d reply “Sali’s Mairamou” Of course you know Sali- he is the head of the village farmer’s association and well respected around town. So next time you needed that Mairamou, you’d ask for “Mairamou Sali.”
Others might pick up nicknames as last names. My friend’s house guard was named “Bouba Appereille (camera)” because his eyes bugged out like a camera lens. I had a student named “Robert Manga Manga” which translate to “Robert Big.” I’m sure that was just his nickname, but once it gets put on official school registration papers, it’s going to stick. As for names like “Bishop”, I knew a kid named “Dairou Lamido” (king) because even as a baby he had a certain solemn demeanor. I became known as “Hadja” (one who has been to Mecca) despite having never been near Mecca because I once stepped outside with my headscarf tied like a Muslim woman. I imagine that a lot of the seemingly random last names we encounter have similarly fanciful origins.
Of course, jobs were a big one. And I did know some people with pretty amusing job-related names. I knew a “Sali Mota” (meaning "motorcycle) who drove a motorcycle taxi. One man introduced himself as “Amadou Woila Voyage”, “Woila Voyage” being the name of the bus company he worked for. I hope that name doesn’t stick for generations!
And then of course there are descriptions of where people live. Natural features like rivers and hills were obvious candidates, but so were things like schools, bakeries. bars, bus stops and markets.
Anyway, it was a really interesting time, and gave me a lot of insight into our own past.
Also note that people named after places are unlikely to be named after the place they lived.
If you live in Sacramento, calling yourself “John Sacramento” is unlikely to differentiate yourself from from all the other Johns in Sacramento (unless you somehow embody a distinctive Sacramento-ness.) But if your family is from Modesto and you are living in Sacramento, then you’ve got something. You may well end up being called “John Modesto.”
As I mentioned in this post, I thought my last name, Osborne, was just an ordinary English name, probably referencing some ancestor’s place of birth, but a few years ago I found out it’s actually adapted from the Old Norse “Asbjørn”, which means, literally, “god bear”. It is most likely a reference to Ursus spelaeus, more commonly known as the cave bear, an immense prehistoric bear that was allegedly worshipped as a god by neanderthals.
Yep, linden or “lime tree”. (Not the citrus – the deciduous Tilia). Linden leaves appear in German heraldry, the wood was used for carving, and the bark (IIRC) used for shields… which is where the surname of Linneycomes from; a surname in my family. (Although the source is not credited I’ve seen most of the information on that web page before in Reaney).
Actually no, taking names from family farms was never common in Sweden. The two part nature names that are the second most common type of name in Sweden were mostly directly invented as surnames. From this article:
We have a few Cameroonians studying or working at my department, and apparently some of them did have to make up a first name in order to get official documentation here. They had only a single name in Cameroon.