People Have Been Last Names, For How Long?
“Hey skinny” “Hi, Shorty”. “There’s Fast”. “Here comes Blondie”. Sounds quite common. It is a natural way to address people – giving a name to an individual that describes him in a way. We know, this is how the names were given originally. A girl born during famine might well be called Una- (Celtic for “famine”), a golden-haired blondie might be called Blanche (French for “white”). A boy might be called David, as it means “beloved”.
A first name was all, that an individual had for centuries or thousands of 3%_e? _ The Normans conquered England in the year 1066. The last names or surnames were the additions around that period of time, for the purpose of better identification of people. The first name only was not considered enough to set one person apart from another. There might be two David in town, and one of them was quite lazy. People. as such began to address this one “David, who is also lazy” or “David does little”.
Originally, the last names were called “eke names”. The word “eke” meant “also”. The word “nickname” used to get from this word. People got into the habit of giving two names to a person, they thought of many ways of creating the second name. One of the ways was to mention the father’s name. John’s father’s name was William. John might well be called John Williamson or John Wilson (Will’s son) or John Wills.
Another way to identify people with the second names was to add the name of the village, the village an individual belonged to. A person living near the “woods” might well be called Wood or if he lived near the village green, he might be called John Green.
The work of an individual that a person did was another way to identify him. The last name is Smith Taylor, and Wright. (“Wright, means someone who does mechanical work”.)
The nearest name to last names in ancient times existed among the Romans. A second name was sometimes added to indicate the family or clan to which a child belonged. Later, they added a third name which was a kind of descriptive nickname.
