Culture · 6 pages · 12 min
Why surnames have jobs, places, and fathers in them
Many family names froze an old byname: a trade, a place, a parent, or a nickname.
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From the opening
Surnames in much of Europe carry jobs, places, and fathers because those were the bynames people used before the byname froze and was passed to children who had neither the job nor that father. The word stayed; the reason it was first attached did not. The opening covers trades that outlived the work, places and landscape words, and fathers turned into family words.
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Inside
- Trades that outlived the work
- Places and landscape words
- Fathers turned into family words
- A freeze, not a current description
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- European hereditary surnames from occupational, locative, and patronymic bynames
- Parish and tax records and the spread of fixed family names