Who decided that we should have surnames?

Question

Anyone know why or how surnames came about. I assume we all had a first name but who decided that we should have surnames and that name would be for the man that when he married, his wife would take that name and all their children would also bear that name?

Just one of the weird things that goes through my head and it's been bugging me for a couple of days, sad, I know.

O.k. I understand that surnames were given to people to identify their jobs or where they came from but what about the weird names that you come across. I am researching my family tree and there are names in there such as Chipchase, Quillbill and Snowball. Makes you wonder what they did for a living.

Answer 1

robins son joe would become joe robinson, etc

Answer 2

The best example I can give you is a name like Shoemaker. Guess what that family did generations ago. Back in the day villages weren't very populated and there were a lot of the same first name. So when talkign about John he became John Shoemaker because he made shoes as opposed to John Smith who was a blacksmith.

As far as the wife and children taking the husbands name that isn't true in all culture, but in western culture it tends to be do to religion and morals of the times ie. the wife and children were the husbands property.

ThHe wierd ones are easy actually. As people moved and spoke different languages the names got bastardized. An excellent example is Ellis Island-if your name was to 'ethnic' they just changed it. Something that once made sense in German is complete nonsense in Eglish.

Answer 3

Surnames described people's professions (baker, butcher etc) or their place of birth, religion etc. Sometimes surnames evoled as a result of a family event, myth, legend or eccentricity. So say a distant relative was known for his affairs or for fighting, names like,Lusty, Punch, Lairy may have developed as way of marking the trait within a pool of family behaviour. Some names also come from the other languages introduced into the UK due to invasion and settlement, such as French, Danish, Celtic, Saxon, Roman, etc.

Answer 4

It was originally a way to let someone know your status or homeland. Robert the Baker, Ellen of Evesbury kind of thing. Eventually "The" and "of' were dropped and you're left with the Robert Baker, and Ellen Evesbury. The variations came from mingling cultures and languages, and from misspellings by the record keepers on ellis island when the immigrants would come over. they sometimes didnt speak the language the immigrant did, so they'd approximate the sound and spelling.
In addition to the resons listed above such as "Son of"

Answer 5

One theory is for property identification. The cow belongs to the son of John..... Johnson. When slavery was abolished, many slaves took the names of the service they provided as a slave. Last names such as Carpenter, Fisher, Cook, Smith ( blacksmith), etc emerged. And then when taxes were levied, surnames were a must.

Answer 6

i like your question, surnames are there to see which family you are in, it also helps in records and stuff if you wanna make a passport, or if youwant to get married- to ensure that you don't marry a relative. surnames are very useful to identify a person as well, because a lot of people have the same first names.

surnames also ensure security, such as a bank account, any person, ie: bob could get into the account if they don't have a surename.

Answer 7

You've asked two questions: 1) Why? and 2) Why men? Re: 1) your given name is yours. Your surname identifies the group you belong to. Re: 2) I think the origins are sex-based, but not sexist. Historically, men went away to gleen provisions. Women stayed closer to home. Thus men met a wider circle of people. It made sense for the groups to be identified through the male name. Many of our surnames derive from the guilds that men belonged to in the middle ages, like "Smith" or "Mason," or the places they were from, like "---berger" or "Von ---" I hope this helps.

Answer 8

Our families grew and you have the problem of identifying clan or family names then as we intermarried the tribal name became our defining name. Here in Southwest Louisiana I came as a stranger to marrt a local man. The first question was almost always "Cherie, qui est ton PaPa?" In other words "Who is your Daddy ? That was forty years ago and I am stll introduced as the daughter os some English who married the elder son of Mr and Mrs ________

Answer 9

It was an english knight by the name of "Sir Name" who declared that the overuse of the english language in describing origins should be condensed into a more useful statement and changed to decide one's title, thus our names became called "surnames".

Answer 10

A family name, surname, or last name is the part of a person's name that indicates to what family he or she belongs. During the centuries of Roman empire, Latin speakers used family names as normal ways of identifying their familial relationships. After the western Roman empire fell, use of family names became rare in western Europe. Until the 12th century, most people throughout the western world did not again use or have a family name, and they were called by the single name they had (which was called a "first" or "given name" only after family names came into use). One of the most accepted theories for the origin of surname use attributes their introduction to the Normans and the Domesday Book of 1086. The use of surnames gradually became an accepted practice throughout Western Europe in the Middle Ages. In parts of the world, family names did not appear in common use until the 17th to 19th centuries, and they are unused in some cultures even today.

In many cultures in Africa and Asia, the family name is typically spoken and written first when referring to an individual. This order is often erroneously called the Eastern order because Europeans are most familiar with the examples of China, Japan and Korea. In most Western cultures, the family name is today given last, giving rise to the term last name for family name.

In countries that use family names, these are most often used to refer to a stranger in a formal setting, often with the use of a title such as Mr or Mrs (or equivalent). The first name, given name, or personal name is the one used by friends, family, and other intimates

The word surname is name prefixed by the French word sur (meaning "on"), which derives from Latin super ("over" or "above"), meaning "additional name." As early as the 14th century it was also found spelled as sirname or sirename (suggesting that it meant "man's name" or "father's name") due to folk etymology.

The use of family names varies among cultures. In particular, Icelanders, Tibetans, Burmese, and Javanese often do not use a family name — well-known people lacking a family name include U Thant (Burmese), Suharto and Sukarno (see Indonesian names), and Dilber (Uyghur, a Turkic language). Also, many royal families do not use family names.

In some cultures, a woman's family name traditionally changes upon marriage, although few countries mandate such a change. Other modern options include combining both family names, changing neither name, or creating a new name, e.g. combining letters of previous surnames or creating a pseudonym unrelated to the previous surnames.

In the 19th century, Francis Galton published a statistical study of the extinction of family names. (See Galton-Watson process for an account of some of the mathematics.)

In English-, Dutch-, German-, French- and Scandinavian-speaking countries, people often have two or more given names, and the family name goes at the end. (Occasionally a surname is called the "second name", which can be confused with a middle name.) In Spain and Hispanic areas, people have one or more given names and two family names, one from the father and one from the mother. In Italy, people may have one or more given names, no middle name, and a family name. In the Portuguese-speaking countries, people can have one or two given names and from one up to four family names taken from the father and/or from the mother.

Answer 11

Up until the thirteenth century, surnames were unknown except amongst the aristocracy who would use the name of their fief to identify themselves. Everybody else got by with their given name - John, Dicken, William etc.

As the population grew, it became difficult to identify individuals:
"Do you mean William, the baker?"
"No, William, John's son."

Surnames were chosen to indicate the name of the father (Johnson, Dickenson etc), the trade practised (Fletcher, Baker, Smith etc), physical description (Strong, Redman, Large etc) of the place of origin (Eastman, Bradshaw, London).

the word "surname" comes from the French word "sur" meaning, in this context, "added on".