SURNAMES (a brief outline)
This entry was posted on 2/26/2006 12:08 PM and is filed under Surnames.
In the beginning the first family names came into existance in a variety of different ways.In general people were named after a place or the work they performed.The upper class landowners in early Europe aquired their Surnames from physical features of the land.Physical features of a persons color sometimes contributed to their family Surname.Many families were named after certain animal caracteristics.Families which moved from one settlement to another often used the name of the villiage or town they came from as their Surnames.A widely used mothod of naming in early times would be adding a suffix to the end of an existig Surname. For example if the surname was john,adding son to the end would create a new Surname ,Johnson or Son of John.People of different countries used the same methods except the words they used have the same meaning but would be spelled different.
Surnames have many different spellings ,some have to do with coming from different countries ,but some have to do with spelling it the way it sounded.In fact this is probably why there are so many misspelling of the Surnames in records and population censuses.In my opinion some name spellings were changed in order to keep the identity unique in a certain branch of the particular family.Surnames,even though spelled different usually have the same Roots.
The first Countries to start using Surnames were France and Germany sometime after the invasion of bitain in 1066.Merging of these countries and population growth made it difficult to maintain a one name system. Confusing the single names led to the use of Surnmaes .Shortly after France and Germany adopted the Surname system Scandanavia followed the trend sometime in the 11th century.
Early civilizations such as Greeks,Babylonians,Egyptians,assyrians and Hebrews did not use surnames .Even today middle eastern Families who still reside in the middle east still do not use Surnames.
Early Romans did not use Surnames,but later in history they had adopted a 3 Name system also.Im sure due to the growth in population and aquiring more families this one name system became an issue similar to europe in the 11th century.The roman soceity adopted a 3 name system similar to ours today consisting of a First Name ,a Middle Name and a Last Name.All these names had particular meanings in which identified its user.As populations grow, there becomes a necesssity to identify people in a different manner.Even in our coutry today there are families beginning to use a four name system to insure the Identity of the males in their family lines.
