Nowadays, everybody has a surname, but it wasn’t always
like this. I expect you can think of some of your friends who have
the same first name. It could be quite confusing if there were
three people called Tom in your class and they didn’t have
another name as well.
Hundreds of years ago, it didn’t matter if you only had
one name because towns and villages were very small and one name
would be enough. Surnames began to be used when villages started
getting larger and just one name didn’t make it clear who was
who. Others in the village would begin to add an extra name so that
people knew which John (or Richard or William) they were talking
about. These extra names (that we now call surnames) can be divided
into four groups.
1. Names which came from the Christian name
of your father - so John the son of Richard would become
John Richardson and John the son of William would become John
Williams.
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2. Names from the job that
you did - so the John who was a Farmer would become John
Farmer. |
| 3. Names from where you
lived - This could be an important place in the village or
the name of a village itself - so John who lived by the church
would become John Church or John who came from Torrington would
become John Torrington. |
 |
4. Names that described your personality or
what you looked like - so John with white hair would become
John Whitehead. These included animal names as, when surnames were
developing, people would associate certain animals with particular
characteristics - so the John who was very brave would become John
Lyon (from the saying ‘as brave as a lion’).
Surnames began to be used in this country between 500 and 1000
years ago. To begin with, surnames were not passed down in families
and one person may have more than one ‘surname’ during
his life. As more records became written down it was important to
be able to show which family you belonged to so you could inherit
property. This encouraged people to stick to one name and pass it
on to their children.
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