Tuesday 24 April 2012

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose; by any other name would smell so sweet." - William Shakespeare

Onomatology (Onomastics) is the study of how and where surnames began, what they originally meant, and their various spellings.

As far as we know, the first people to have surnames were the Chinese. According to legend, Emperor Fushi decreed the use of surnames in about 2852 B.C. The Chinese generally have three names: the surname, generation name, and given name. The surname is placed first, and comes from one of the 438 words in Po-Chia-Hsing, a sacred Chinese poem. It is followed by the generation name, which is taken from a poem of 30 characters adopted by each family. The given name is then placed last.

To begin with, the Romans only had one name. Before long, however, this had evolved into three: the given name, called the praenomen (notice how similar this is to the French word prĂ©nom) came first, followed by the nomen, designating the clan, and then the cognomen, or last name. Some Romans even added a fourth name, the agnomen, to commemorate a remarkable event or action. With the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire, single names once again became customary.

At the start of the Middle Ages, people were referred to by a single given name, however gradually the idea of adding another name to distinguish between individuals became popular, and certain patterns begin to emerge in names; for example, the place of birth, descriptive characteristics, the occupation, or the father's name. By the 12th century, second names were used so frequently that it was considered in some places vulgar to not have one. It is worth noting, however, that these second names did not apply to families and were not hereditary.

The contemporary use of hereditary surnames originated in the Venetian aristocracy in the 10th or 11th century. Crusaders returning home took note of this custom, and before long it had spread throughout France, the UK, Germany and Spain. Certainly by the 1370s, the word "surname" was being used in documents and had acquired some dynastic significance, with men sometimes seeking to keep their surnames alive by encouraging friends to adopt them when they had no direct male descendants of their own. As the Government's activities became more wide-reaching, it became necessary to identify individuals accurately. By 1450 at the latest, most people in these countries had a fixed, hereditary surname.

Family names also began to gain popularity in Russia and Poland by the 15th and 16th centuries. The Scandinavian countries, on the other hand, continued to follow their custom of using the father's name as a second name, and didn't begin using family surnames until the 19th century. Shockingly, Turkey waited until 1933 to start using surnames, when the government forced them on its people.

In most cases, surnames were first used by the nobility and wealthy landowners, and the practice then trickled down to the merchants and commoners. Spelling and pronunciation have changed over the years as many family names were dependent on the competency and discretion of the writer. This explains why the same name can sometimes be spelled in different ways, even in the same document.

Most surnames today evolved from:
> Occupation: Every village had its share of Smiths, Carpenters and Millers, and the Smiths in one town were not necessarily related to the Smiths in the next.
> Location: Surnames ending in -hill, -ford, -wood, -brook, -well, etc are fairly self-explanatory. Less recognised locational surnames include those ending in -ton, -ham, -wick, or -stead, meaning a farm or small settlement. There are also locational surnames derived from words which are no longer in use today, for example -don (a hill), -bury (a fortification), or -leigh/-ley (a clearing).
Patronymic (Father's Name): Can be recognised by the termination -son, such as Rapson. Some endings used by other countries include the Norman -Fitz and Irish -Mac. John Fitzgerald would therefore have been  John, the son of Gerald, etc.
> Characteristic: For example, Short, Little, Long

Many historians believe that locational and characteristic surnames were the first to become hereditary. Surnames from occupations came later, and patronymic surnames were the last to become hereditary, as although they had been used for a long time, they would change with every generation.

The Rapson surname, as mentioned above, is thought to be of English and Welsh patronymic origin, meaning "son of Ralph."

Source: MCMXCV (1995). The Burke's Peerage World Book of Rapsons. USA: Halbert's Family Heritage. p21-24.

1 comment:

  1. I find this a very educational blog entry. Genealogy is made more interesting because of surname changes.

    ReplyDelete