Where did our second names come from?

Question

i.e George SMITH, Andy BOOTH etc.

Answer 1

My second name came from a list of Family names given by Spain during the Spanish occupation of the Philippines. We were known basically then as Diosdado of Malate or something.

Answer 2

In England, I understand, they were

1. indicated a person was the son of a man

2. occupation

3. habitation. name of town or castle a person lived closed to. I have Overtons in my family which simply means over town.

4. some characteristic about a person

There was a man named John that had 4 sons. Henry, George, Sam and Robert.

Henry was known as Henry son of John and if he could write that is how he signed his name. He became Henry Johnson or Henry Jones, but so did a lot of other fellas who had fathers named John.

George was a blacksmith and he became George Smith. Other occupational names are Miller, Fisher, Cooper, Baker, Barber,
Carpenter etc.

Then there was Sam. His name is brought up every now and then. He lived on or close to a hill and he became Sam Hill. Other guys living on or near a hill took the name Hill.

Robert was short and he was known as Robert the short and he became Robert Short. However, he could have been Robert Small, Robert Stout etc.

Four legitimate sons of the same man took different surnames but they were not the only persons who took the same surname.

Gaelic Mac, Mc and the Norman Irish Fitz means son of . The prefix O means descendant of. Kil means church in Irish and Kirk means church in Scottish. So people with those 2 prefixes lived close to a church or had something to do with a church. O'Brien means descendant of Brian. However, you have to realize there was more than one Brian that had descendants. Fitzgerald means son of Gerald but no doubt there was more than one Gerald that had sons.

It is a common misconception that people with the same surname come from the same root of that surname.

You might find the link below interesting regarding surname products

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/comconsumerpsst.cfm

Answer 3

Sometimes the spelling of a last name was misspelled on a census form, since a lot of the people were not educated and didn't know how to spell. If the census taker asked the family in the house how to spell their name and they didn't really know either, the census taker would spell it the way it sounded so it sometimes changed from one census to another. And different parts of the country had different accents so that enters into the spelling also. An example would be Smith, Smythe, Smithe. It can be very tedious work to find your ancestors, especially if they have a really common name.

Answer 4

The Romans had started the Family names to keep out the riff raff from power, only the founding families of Rome, were Patricians', thus able to rule.

but the name could be given by adoption. (I answered this a few days ago), if you descend from western Europe, then it was down to the Normans, who were the first land greedy folks in History. They wanted to leave an inheritance in land to their sons, so branded every pocket of land with their name. John of Crecy (John deCrecy) Edward owner of the forest of Gisbourne, Edward Baron deGisbourne (Edward Barons or Edward Gisbourne)

The Norman kings were even greedier, so they taxed the knights and squires by land, not personal wealth. Hence the doomsday book, it was a tax measure. Thus ruling families had fixed (taxable) names. In exchange for taxes they were given powerful rights and privileges.

thus after marriage, some names were combined, to show parentage and manorial rights.

The other kings in Europe latched onto the idea, and taxed by land owned. the nickname used by the common folk, would change each generation, These had been used by the Viking and Saxons before the Norman conquest, and were usually physical traits - like white beard (white), the tall (longshanks), the wide (stout) -

as communities grew, so the sons of people were identified, thus John son of John would be known as John Johnson.

After 1066, when villages began to grow into towns, additional names were created that gave a location. John of the wood (John Wood) William of the steep birch covered hill (William Birchenough) Thomas who lives on the parish land (Thomas Churchman).

Additional names were adopted by tradesmen, Pete the Blacksmith (Peter Smith) and if another Peter who was also a blacksmith started up in the same village, he would be (Peter Black) or (Peter Smithy). John the Carpenter, Mark the arrow maker (Fletcher). After about two hundred years (about 1400), they had copied the Norman lords and surnames were inherited from father to son.

when a person moved town or village, he was sometimes known by the name of the place he moved from, if not in the same country, then by the country he had come from (Jack London, Peter Strasbourg, Colin French)

Finally names get shortened over time, so John Woodman becomes John Woods, or Mary Tinsmith becomes Mary Smith.

Spelling was down to the local priest, and wasnot standard for english untill 1760, the records did not get standard spelling until 1850, so you have variations of the same surname over time.

Answer 5

Hum... Some of it goes to far back to know but, Well my grandfather changed the family name to a name to sound better in the new country when he came here.
So that might be what happened. Or they might change it to a family member's name or even just a popular name at the time. I think from millions of years fixing it for new languages like that and just legally changing it for no reason totally changed most names.

Answer 6

Karel's discussion of surname origins here ( http://members.tripod.com/~zlimpkk/Genealogy/czechsurnames.html ) is not just about Czech names. Most surnames originated from either an occupation (Smith, Cooper, Schwartz/Schwarz = the German word for "Black" as in Blacksmith), geographic location (Warshawshy = someone from Warsaw, Newman= new person in village), father's name (Johnson = John's son), or physical characteristic (Strong, Tallman). It's a fun topic to research. Good Luck.

Answer 7

As well as coming from jobs that were done, names like Brown and Green proclaimed ownership by the local landowner (bit like players in football wearing different tabards).
Place names were often taken from the names of the landowner too.
Some names would then have changed with time.

Answer 8

Hunter, Thatcher, Smith, Forrester, Fisher, Farmer, Mason, Spinner, Farrier, Potter, Miller, Wright, Penman, Roper, Weaver, Rider, Turner, Slater,Shoemaker, Dyer, Skinner. Some from our fathers such as Robertson son of Robert. Mac in Scotland is son, ie. MacDonald is son of Donald, in Russia they use, 'OV'. In Ireland the use 'O' ie. O'Brian son of Brian, Etc.

Answer 9

Surnames originated from several sources - they could have been from where your family lived, e.g. John of York (becomes shorted to John York), William from Bristowe - the old name for Bristol - becomes William Bristowe.
It could be from your ancestor's trade - John the Fletcher (maker of arrows) becomes John Fletcher, Margaret Thatcher's husband's family were probably roof thatchers.
It may be from a person's appearance - John Coley (a Coley was the name of a blackbird - so John's family were probably dark haired).
Some people's surnames are of foreign origin - if they end in "ette" they are probably of French ancestry (back in the 16th Century, I have Bourgoynes and Bertolets in my Family Tree - so obviously have French ancestors from the 1500's.

Answer 10

From what are family did for a liveing back in the day. Like George Smith may have been a black smith or Andy Booth made Booth.