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Article written by Joe Saunders
Surnames, also known as last or family names, are a key part of modern identity in Britain and across much of the world. They are used to mark us out in day-to-day life and in official documents as well as indicating cultural and personal affiliations. Surnames are key components of family and local history research, allowing us to trace people and families through the documentary record.
In the modern world we often take the existence of surnames for granted; they are so much a part and parcel of life. However, surnames have their own fascinating history which is interesting in and of itself, as well as being useful to understand when carrying out our own research.
The early development of surnames in western Europe generally is uncertain, however it is known that such names originated after c.1000. They may have emerged early on in Ireland where people were often known by their personal name and a (non-hereditary) by-name. Hereditary family names in Britain developed at the top of society during the medieval period before gaining popularity with the lower and middling sorts.[1]
The narrow range of personal names favoured in medieval Britain may have driven the desire and need for further names to distinguish individuals from one another. Some scholars have argued that the rise in written records from the twelfth century onwards may also have contributed to the adoption of hereditary surnames, so that continuity of land ownership could be established.[2] However, medieval scribes often recorded people using their father as an identifier, in a similar way to the system of patronymic and matronymic surnames still used in Iceland today.so this is not a complete explanation.
Surnames became widely established through a long process. It appears that they were first adopted in southern England and East Anglia from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards. It took longer for the practice to become common across northern England and Lowland Scotland but by the fifteenth century, most people in Britain had hereditary surnames.
Surnames can be divided into broad classes depending on their origin such as descriptive, relational, locative, and occupational.
- Occupational, e.g. Smith, Baker, Wheeler (wheelwright)
- Locative, e.g. Lancaster, Shaw (wood), Townsend
- Descriptive, e.g. Short, Blonde, Moody (from the Old English for brave)
- Relational, e.g. Wilson, MacDonald, Jones
Different types of surnames were common in the various parts of Britain, with Celtic areas producing mostly surnames derived from personal names with England and lowland Scotland producing mostly names drawn from locations, descriptions and occupations.[3]
When thinking about surname origins it is important to bear in mind that such names are always being invented and reinvented, falling out of use and coming into being. Many of the surnames which emerged in the medieval period have since disappeared through failure of the male line. The overall stock of surnames has increased however, both through immigration and the corruption of original names into various forms.
If you’d like to learn more about the history of surnames then there are a range of books you can look at, such as R. A. McKinley, A History of British Surnames (2015) and William Lewis, What's in Your Surname?: The Fascinating Story of British Surnames (2014).
If you have an interesting surname in your family history or place of interest and would like to explore people of that name then you may be interested in One-Name Studies. Check out the Guild of One-Name Studies.
Sources
[1] David Hey (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (1996), 428.
[2] Hey, Local and Family History, 428.
[3] Ellen Castelow, ‘History of Surnames’, https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Surnames/
Pharos courses
Pharos have three courses on One-Names Studies which assist with the pursuit of single-name research: