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ArchivesRe: thats great and all but how exactally do last names start?¿?
in reply to a message by penny acotn
well, i can only add to this that in many Western Europian countries due to a process started by Napoleon that every person in a country was written down in the archives and therefore needed to give up a last name which stayed put from that point on. As many people from lower cultural levels (pretty much everyone except those who were of a noble family) didn't had a real surname, they gave up the names as they were known by in the neighbourhood. This could be their profession (John the Farmer), a reference to their father (John, son of James, i.e. Jameson), the place they were from (John of Barnaby) or a characteristic of the person which became identificable with him (John the Curly).
I know for example that in my country (the Netherlands) when you dig into your genealogy tree that at a certain you'll find that the surname change, like:
Piet Harms (Piet, son of Harm), his son's name was Jan Piets (Jan, son of Piet), his son's name Piet Jans (Piet, son of Jan). note: often firstnames are repeated due to the tradition of naming your son after your own father (i.e. the son is named after his grandfather).
Noble families are therefore the ones that you can dig into real far, up to 1200s, because those families where of importance and therefore their names are highly likely to be written on paper during history.
I know for example that in my country (the Netherlands) when you dig into your genealogy tree that at a certain you'll find that the surname change, like:
Piet Harms (Piet, son of Harm), his son's name was Jan Piets (Jan, son of Piet), his son's name Piet Jans (Piet, son of Jan). note: often firstnames are repeated due to the tradition of naming your son after your own father (i.e. the son is named after his grandfather).
Noble families are therefore the ones that you can dig into real far, up to 1200s, because those families where of importance and therefore their names are highly likely to be written on paper during history.
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Replies
Surnames didn’t turn up until the 12th century in central Europe and they slowly spread eventually all over the world. They started with the royals and nobles, then went on to the citizens of the cities and finally reached the countryside (due to Napolean as Menke said). There had been bynames before, like Strubil (“curly head”) or Friso (“the Frisian”), but as long as they were not passed on to the children, they cannot be called surnames.
Two things made surnames neccesary in the high Middle Ages: a dramatic increase of the population and at the same time a decrease of the number of given names. A system of making up new names from the name elements of the parents (and sometimes grandparents), that had worked for a couple of hundred years, came out of fashion and so did quite a number of names. So to tell one Johannes from the other, you had to add a second name, which eventually was handed down to the children.
In Japan it became obligatory to have a second name in 1875, 1934 in Turkey and not until the 1950s in Egypt.
The Romans had a three element system: given name + clan name + cognomen. Quintus Horatius Flaccus would be: the fifth + from the Horatians clan + the Blond.
Andy ;—)
Two things made surnames neccesary in the high Middle Ages: a dramatic increase of the population and at the same time a decrease of the number of given names. A system of making up new names from the name elements of the parents (and sometimes grandparents), that had worked for a couple of hundred years, came out of fashion and so did quite a number of names. So to tell one Johannes from the other, you had to add a second name, which eventually was handed down to the children.
In Japan it became obligatory to have a second name in 1875, 1934 in Turkey and not until the 1950s in Egypt.
The Romans had a three element system: given name + clan name + cognomen. Quintus Horatius Flaccus would be: the fifth + from the Horatians clan + the Blond.
Andy ;—)
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