When did families discontinue passing on the "son" names to their children? I.E. Richardson - son of richard.

Answer 1

when families stopped being true families n teenagers started getting pregnant n havin 4 babies by 4 different guys n divorce rates went up thats exactly when it stopped
wait i read that wrong i thought u meant like john sr john jr joe sr je jr type of thing never mind excuse me for bein a dumb@ss

Answer 2

Actually when surnames were taken, legitimate sons of the same man could have a different surname but they each shared their surnames with others with whom they were not related.

Their names were taken indicating they were the son of someone, or their occupation, or where they lived, or some characteristic about them.

Example: A man named John had 4 legitimate 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. When he took or was assigned a surname, he became Henry Johnson or Henry Jones.

George was a blacksmith and he became George Smith

Sam lived on or near a hill and became Sam Hill. I have Overtons in my family tree and it simply means over town (settlement).

Robert was black headed and became Robert Black. He could have had the name Stout, Short, Fairchild or any number of characteristics people saw in him.

The Normans introduced surnames to the masses for taxation purposes. It wasn't until the last melennium that most Europeans had surnames.

Answer 3

guy/gal above me is right. I know in Sweden, Norway and Denmark they still do this. My mother's grandfather was from Sweden and his last name was Andersson (son of Ander). Later after he moved to the U.S. he had it changed to Anderson. Not that much of a difference

Answer 4

To my knowledge, it hasn't stopped. My last name is Johnson--or "son of John".

Norway, Sweden, and Finland also use son and/or "dottr" (daughter) in their surnames. For example: The most common names in Sweden are originally patronymic, which means that the son of e.g. Karl received the surname Karlsson (Karl's son). The daughter received the name Karlsdotter (Karl's daughter). Since the 19th century these names are inherited exactly as in the USA or the United Kingdom and women also receive "son-names". Some common Swedish surnames are (with their percentage of distribution) Johansson (3.3%)
Andersson (3.2%)
Karlsson (2.5%)
Nilsson (2.2%)
Eriksson (1.7%)
Svensson (1.3%)
Gustafsson (0.90%)
Pettersson (0.83%)
Jonsson (0.72%)
Jansson (0.63%)
Hansson (0.54%)
A surname with "berg" referred to a mountain; "dal" referred to a valley. So, the name "Dalberg" literally means "valley mountain."
In Australia, these son names (and their rank) total: 5 Wilson 46,961 ; 7 Johnson 33,435 ; 10 Anderson 30,910 ; and 11 Thompson 29,931 are fairly common
In Canada, ranked 10th is Wilson &12th is Johnson . The most popular Danish family names all end with "sen", meaning "son". That means, that for example "Jensen" is "son of Jens", "Poulsen" is "son of Poul". An example: if Hans Petersen's father was Peter Sorensen, Hans' father's name was Peter, and his grandfather's Soren.
Names starting with O' and Mac/Mc were originally patronymic, so names like O'Connor would mean "son of Connor" in Ireland.
Based on the Japanese surname Dictionary , issued in 1997, there are 291,129 different surnames in Japan. If one surname is pronounced the same but written with different Chinese characters, it counts as a different surname, meaning there are believed to be approximately 300,000 surnames in Japan. There are about 56,000 characters in the largest Chinese dictionaries ; but most of them are archaic, obscure or rare variant forms. Knowledge of about 3,000 characters is sufficient to read Modern Standard Chinese. To read Classical Chinese though, you need to be familiar with about 6,000 characters. The Chinese writing system an open-ended one, meaning that there is no upper limit to the number of characters. So, in reality, there could be even MORE Japanese surnames.
In Latvia, there are "son" surnames like: Jansons, or Petersons. In Lithuania, surnames of married women end in -ienė while those of unmarried girls end in -ytėė, -utė, -aitė., and men in "as", or "us", "kas", "nas", or "ius".
The Netherlands end sometimes in "sen", such as number 8 in rank, Janssen. Polish names which end with -ski or -cki have a male and a female form - Kaminski / Kaminska, Wielicki / Wielicka, etc. In Russia, "-ev" or "-ov"means "of --such as Ivanov means "of Ivan", "Sokolov" means "of a falcon." Russian surnames may originally denote "son of" or "serf of". , and women's surnames have an "-a" suffix, denoting possession. Thus, for example, "Ivanova" means "belonging to John" or "John's".
Family names ending in -ez are typically patronymic in Spain--Martinez (son of Martin), Perez (son of Pedro),.or Sanchez (son of Sancho), for example.
So, as you can see, this practice has not ended. You just need to know what to look for.

Answer 5

Some Scandinavian countries still do it this way.