Last names are inherited, so how far back did last names go? Did people initially choose their last name and then passed it down to children? Why are there so many common last names between people who aren’t related?
The original question was asked by a 6 year old, and it got me thinking about all of these other questions too.
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Last names were originally descriptors denoting family, profession or sometimes location.
So – John Anderson = the person named John who is the son of Ander
John Brewer = the person named John who works brewing beer
John Ridgefield = the person named John who lives by the field on the Ridge.
Over time, as family and inheritance became important among the rich and aristocratic, the surname became something that connected a person to their family, and helped establish their importance in the hierarchy of society.
Last names only came to prominence as population density increased. John and Robert were fine as names until your small farm/village expanded to an larger settlement.
To answer the second part of the question about common last names – if you trace names far back enough many people likely were related at one point and as families grew, moved and grew distant they would have eventually lost touch with certain branches of the family. Think about your great-grandparents, did they have any siblings, do you know much about them or their children? It doesn’t take long for families to be separated like that.
Similarly, because of how these names were originally created (son of Ander, John the Brewer) there is a possibility for there to be a Brewer in north England and a Brewer in south England who may or may not know each other, but are known in the community by that surname.
The idea of “family” names dates back millennia, at least among the ruling classes, but they aren’t always the _last_ name.
For example: Gaius Julius Caesar. Julius is the family name, indicating he was a member of the Julia family or clan.
Among commoners the family or last names were informal. In early modern Europe, tax collection and censuses created the need to distinguish, on a legal basis, between John the barrel maker (Cooper) and John the bread maker (Baker).
It depends on the region and culture.
In China, Emperor Fu Xi started the use of family names as early as 2000 BCE to facilitate census taking.
There were various uses of patronyms in the Anciet world, usually to describe tribe, family, and historic ancestors. For example, Alexander Heraclides Karanos would be Alexander the Great’s full name. Which is his first name, decendant of Heracles, and his dynastic name.
But the modern use of surnames began in the middle ages around the 10th century, often in preparation of taking a census like the Domesday Book in England.
It really took off in the Age of Exploration being spread by colonialism and by leaders like Napoleon.
Japan didn’t formalize their naming conventions until 1868. Turkey was among the last to require last names as late as 1934.
In England, most people were using last names (surnames) by the early modern period. This would have been the time where last names started being passed down by the father. Before this many last names we have today existed as bynames- unofficial titles given to adults. Stuff like “That’s John, he’s a farmer so we call him John the Farmer”, “That’s Robert, he’s from Dover so we call him Robert of Dover”, “That’s Gregory, he’s bald so we call him Gregory the Bald”. Modern “last names” as surnames came into widespread use in Europe following the Black Plague, when people began to travel very far from their villages in search of work, as well as the rise of urban living in the early modern period when tons of people with similar given names would have been living in close proximity.
Depends on the part of the world. In Europe, the earliest last names were professions, colors, locations, and family relationships. What’s amazing is the Spanish last names that end in -ez are actually a holdover from when the Gothic tribes controlled the Iberian peninsula. The -ez suffix in the now extinct Gothic language meant “son of”. So Hernandez means “son of Hernando”, Rodriguez means “son of Rodrigo”.
Last names in Europe came into being when settlements go so large you had to be able to distinguish one Robert from another, so to speak.
Long story short, different cultures have different naming conventions. It’s a fascinating field of study.
In Spanish and Portuguese, surnames also refers to the original city or town (“de La Vega” when refers to location, “Martinez” when refers to an ancestor name), similarly with their English and scandinavian counterparts. In countries with recent slavery history, many african and asian slaves changed their original names and surnames for the owner’s family surname and made their descendants use those since then.
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