En Passant: What’s in a name

I HAVE for a long time been interested in how we got our surnames, also called our family names – like Smith, van Niekerk, Buthelezi and Singh. And I suppose the history of surnames must vary from people to people, from nation to nation, from culture to culture. For instance, in the far east, in countries like Japan and China, did you know that the person’s surname comes first. Jimmy Smith, were he a Japanese lad, would be called Smith Jimmy. Apparently that’s true in Hungary as well, don’t ask me why.

And then, when it comes to surnames in Slavic countries, like Czechoslovakia for example (and also in Greece, as I understand it, and I don’t), girls and boys are given different family names – or not really different but there’s a female form of the same surname.

For instance, I remember reading about old Martina Navrátilová, the Czech tennis player whose biceps I used to envy, and the fact that her dad (actually her stepfather) was Mr Navrátil. The feminine suffix that they add to the father’s name is “ová”, so Martina’s surname is Navrátil + ová. So were I a Czech, and were Carnegie a Czech name, my daughter would be called Doris Carnegieová. Odd, if you’re not used to the idea.

But with my Anglo-Saxon roots, I’m more interested in where surnames I am familiar with came from, because there was a time when we simply didn’t have surnames. There was a time when you were born a serf in a hovel, you scratched a meagre existence where you could, and you then died, either of poverty, disease including the plague, famine, childbirth, or of some sort of conflict. You didn’t need a surname, you couldn’t read or write, never had to sign anything, you owned nothing anyway – it all belonged to the king or the lord of the manor.

The only escape from this grinding poverty and the dependence on the whim of others, was to learn a skill. You could become a barrel maker, a carpenter, learn to thatch cottages, maybe become a weaver or a blacksmith working with iron, perhaps learn how to make arrows.

And then, one day, the lord of the manor would need some labourers, I dunno, to dig a moat around his flippen castle, and he’d have a motley bunch of peasants lined up respectfully tugging their forelocks if he glanced their way, and he’d say, “And you, what’s your name?” And the peasant would say,

“Edward, Sire.”

“And what do you do?” the lord would ask.

“I’m a thatcher, Sire.” And lo and behold, the lord would thereafter recognise Edward as Edward Thatcher.

Thus it is that many English people’s surnames indicate the job that one of their ancestors had – Smith, Baker, Butcher, Taylor, Cooper (a barrel maker), Cook, Fisher, Gardener, Miller, Fletcher (an arrow maker) and there are many, many more examples.

Perhaps among the peasants there were two called Thomas, one who was very blonde and one who had brown hair. To distinguish between the two, the one was thereafter called Thomas Whitehead and the other Thomas Brown. Thus someone’s personal characteristics became their surname.

Maybe there was yet another Thomas, and he was known to live by the wood or forest or up the hill, so he was identified thereafter as Thomas Wood (or Hill or Forest or Forester). Clint Eastwood has an ancestor who was somehow connected with an east wood. Some surnames came from the person’s hometown – “You, where’d yo come from?” “London, Sire.” “OK, Jack London, grab a shovel.”

I like it that we have what are called patronymic (from the father) surnames like:

“You, come here. What’s your name?”

“William, Sire.”

“And where do you come from?”

“I’m Stephen’s son, Sire.”

“OK, William Stephenson, grab a shovel.” And there are plenty of surnames so derived: Richardson, Robinson and Robertson, Johnson, Thomson, Ferguson, Benson, Harrison, Jackson, and there are lots more.

Some surnames ending in “s” are similarly derived, the “s” being a possessive but now without the apostrophe – Davis, Edwards, Rogers, Williams for example. And if you have roots in Scotland, it seems that “Mac” means “son of”, as in MacDonald, MacIntyre etc.

As I understand it, and I might, the Industrial Revolution created a need for surnames largely because suddenly the peasants were called the working class and they needed paying. (Prior to this peasants weren’t paid, they simply existed.) This meant a record had to be kept, and that meant people had to have names which identified them. It also, oddly enough, meant that there was suddenly a need for coins, money, and for fractions of money (like quarter and half pennies) because the working class wanted change.

There’s a lot more to surnames than that, and no doubt a different history depending on your origins. And it’s interesting to think that was I to be given a surname today, I might be called John Scribe, John Stooping, John Beerboep, John Highstreet or John Davidson.

Oh well. Interesting, hey?