Surnames
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 First Name of your father - so John the son of Richard would become John Richardson and John the son of William would become John Williams.
image removed 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. image removed
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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This page last revised Saturday, 19 February 2011
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