In my country we were always called by 3 names so basically name,daughter of, who is a son of. So when you name someone you need to have an original name, then of the father and of the grandfather. Nowadays it’s just original name, father name and family name; the grandfather name is removed which made my grandma very cranky lol
I worked in a bank and one customers name was Robert Robert Roberts. I also worked with a guy named Gerard Ball, and his daughters name was Annette (say her name). We also had a women whose first name was Tess, and she married a man whose surname was Tickle (she kept her maiden name). I'm not making this up. These were actual people I knew (some only briefly).
Here in Scotland we have had them for ages, to distinguish clans and septs. Usually with the format Mac(followed by the surname, usually the name of the first defined cheif) and the "Mac" can be switched with "Mc". It means "son of". Eg- MacDougall / McDougall (meaning son of dougall)
@@DaibhidhBhoAlba fr, and yet we led the way with inventions, innovation and later, videogames. With rockstar north creating red dead and GTA, as well as 4J studios with their role in Minecraft. "They are Scottish crack heads in their sheds, until they invent something, then they are British geniuses" it's fine tho, we r used to ut
My grandma was Scottish; she was very braggadocious about her clan, Mackenzie, to be specific. Although I may not remember all that she spoke of because I was little, she did give me her tartan and plaque, which resembled the crest. Rip Grandma.
In Wales, we had our own system as well! It basically works like this: Your name is Llywelyn Your dad's name is Dafydd Your full name is then Llywelyn ap Dafydd (ab/ap meaning "son of") your son would then be *chosen first name* ap Llywelyn
@@eniej very similar to the Scottish clan system then, cool! Is it the name of your dad you take or the name of the clan founder? Because for use "Mc" or "Mac" means "son of" but the last bit is the clan founder or first chief
Before the British colonised us, people of my ethnic group in Nigeria took their mother's name as their surnames. So if their mother's name was Kolo, their surname would be Kolobe (bé being a possessive suffix like -s or -son in English). While we now use traditional surnames, we still have a few of the old ones which have still survived.
@@dxmxrxsbxxckthxwxxdxlf3931 interesting thought. It’s possible. Our culture back then was community parenting. A child was everyone’s child. You can straight up walk into your neighbour’s house and eat meals, even help with the chores. In polygamous houses, a father can decide to mix up the kids so a child would be raised by a stepmother, or even learn her language, if it’s different to his. So in this environment, it is possible that it would be easier to identify a kid with their mother’s name, rather than their father’s.
i read somewhere that smiths, like blacksmiths, were a very desirable profession. if everyone was taking their profession as their last name, i bet a good chunk of the Smiths were actually people trying to trick others into think that they or their family are smiths.
Well metal workers would have been everywhere so it does make sense that it would have been a common surname. Like all the other common trade surnames really. I expect every village had one of each at a minimum.
@@jeanettemullins yeah, doesn't change the fact that there are an obscene amount of people with the surname Smith, to the point that John Smith became the stereotypical British male name.
In India - many people have names such as Furniturewala or carpenterwala or batliwala. Wala - meaning person or man it essentially translated to Furniture man etc . It’s pretty hilarious and those surnames are relatively new only since the British occupation regardless it’s pretty funny
@@CeruleanStar Names like "Smith" or "Baker" are so common, because during wartime, invading armies would keep those trades alive for weapons and food.
Or the Scottish version. Mc or Mac means ‘son of’ so McDonald is son of Donald. And the Irish version too. ‘O’ meaning ‘of’. So O’Neil means ‘of Neil’ or basically ‘son of Neil’
It's most often a patronym/ after the father (Fitzroy, Richardson, Andrews,McDonald, O'Connor) or from a place your ancestors came from (Pond, in french and dutch we have a lot of people named after Bridges and Cities/Regions that's why all of the 'De' last names don't always refer to nobility in french) or as you mentioned a job (Smith, Baker, Taylor, Thatcher) if you cannot relate it to anything on this list it's most likely from another language or relates to something that people back then would recognize instantly but people have forgotten about since
"Okay, so here's Alex Stronghammer, he's a blacksmith. Joseph Carver, he's a woodcarver. Meet Henry Farmer, he's, well, its self explanatory. Ah and can't forget Jacob Dickinson." "Excuse me, what did you just say his name was?" "Jacob Dickinson" "Wha-what's his profession?" "OH, he's the head priest."
Leonardo da Vinci doesn't have a surname. da Vinci is not a surname. It means "from Vinci". Vinci is a town near Florence. So he's just Leonardo from that town Vinci.
Well in Italy we also have surnames created for orphans or surnames based on a specific trait of a person or even surnames coming from ancient Roman family names
While the rest of Europe was a place dominated by rural feudal lords, in Italy since the XI century cities began to get rich, self-rule themselves, and grow in population. People who moved to cities had to register themselves into city censuses with their names + the name of their fathers + the place of origin/the name of an ancestor/a nickname that could identify them. That's how Italian surnames developed, the most common Italian last names are, in fact, nicknames: (Rossi=Red(head)s, Bianchi= Whites, Grosso=Big) professions (Ferrari= Smiths, Pastore=Shepherd, Cuoco= Cook), places of origin (Fiorentini=from Florence, Romano=from Rome, Genovesi= from Genoa) or name of an ancestor (Di Marco= of Mark, Di Pietro= of Peter).
I do genealogy and a lot of surnames are like that. For instance several generations back I have an Albert de Reede, which just means he's from that town.
Another fun fact about the Black Death and surnames: here in Norway a lot of farmsteads were left desolate because entire families died, which led to the farmsteads, and their new inhabitants in turn, being called Ødegård/Ødegaard, meaning "desolate farm". It's a relatively common Norwegian surname now!
when comunists seized power in russia they forced everyone to have surnames(those who didn't). It happened that jewish people didn't have them so comunists forced them to get them. And it wasn't like "choose a surname" no, no, no. They said "there is a list of surnames(and the surnames were of a limited amount, for example just x people could take the surname x), choose from the list". And if you wanted a good surname, you should pay to comunists. If you didn't have money, you got a surname like "pooper" Pam, pam. I heard it from a jewish from russia when he explained the origin of his surname, and the surname was, I don't remember, something like "pooper". So no creativity reflection. Just comunists' policy.
In Serbia surnames became officially established around 1851. In the past people people identified themselves with their tribe or clan or their place of origin. In 1842 Prince Mihailo Obrenović issued a decree encouraging people to choose fixed surnames, but it wasn't widely adopted, and in 1851 finally Prince Aleksandar Karađorđević issued a stricter decree requiring everyone to have a fixed surname. This decree aimed to modernize the administration and create a more stable family structure. We use patronymics such as adding "-vić" (son of) or "-ović" (grandson of) to the father's name. For example, Marko's son would be Marković.
This is why a vast majority of surnames are either occupational (potter, fletcher, smith, Taylor, baker), locational (any surname derived from a town name or location, like my own) or ‘first name-son’ denoting you as ‘son of X’ (Johnson, Williams, Jackson, Thompson)
My name is another term for Brown. I guess they were like “We’ve got too many Browns already, change a few letters and see what you come up with. Yeah, that’ll do.” 😂
Most surnames in Germany derived from the profession of someone. Like "Bäcker "(baker), "Müller" (Miller), "Kaufmann" (Tradesman), "Fischer", "Bauer" (Farmer), "Metzger" (Butcher), "Vogt" (Bailiff), etc. You get the point. Its because when you would look out for a person who had a common name, lets say "Peter", you would go through the village and look out for "Peter" the "Miller", and people would know where you could find him.
Yep, that's true of very many English names as well. Fisher/Fischer, Miller, Baker, etc. are common names in the English world as well. Kauffman and various Anglicizations (word I made up) like Coffman are common here too.
Makes sense. The Norman Side of the family (my.grandmother), the Gordons of the house of Gordon were practically Scottish royalty. My father's side on the hand, the McVicars, were criminals that ended up on the convict boats to Australia. The Gordons I would imagine traveled in absolute style.
Contact lists in phone are filled with “Jeremy Plumber” or “Mary Florist” which is just an extension of how surnames came into being in the first place
Surnames started when human communities became so large that given names started to repeat. Too many Johns and Janes in one town. To prevent confusion, people started adding family names. So that John Winston is different from John Walterson. The woman in the video is lying for clout.
my name is Klein (Little/Small) and I just kinda love that I keep a family tradition alive even thousands of years later... being 5.3foot (163cm) of pure hate.
In Holland, surnames were there in the 17th century, but were not often used, at least not in smaller towns. Patronyms were mostly used at baptisms and funerals. Marriages tend to use surnames more often. Until 1811 the church took care of the registrations, although there were some courts and civil governments in places. But the way the church registered these events was erratic to say the least. Even first names were mixed up, and the funerals of women were often registered as "the wife of" followed by her husband's name. If a child was born, the husband sometimes became married to the sister of his wife, at least it was written in the church register that way. Mostly the patronym was used when a child was, sometimes but rarely the surname. There was no consistency. These practices, combined with only one clergyman for several towns, made it completely chaotic and risky, and that is why genealogy before 1811 becomes increasingly harder. So after 1811 it became a civil service, using surnames and the different generations were also explicitly mentioned, eg. parents of both husband and wife were registered in marriages.
I wonder if that's where surnames with son came from like Johnson as John's son and Willamson as William's son. I love facts like these because it always makes me think of more questions than answers 😂
There's a massive difference between not being able to find workers because an enormous amount of the eligible work force died and not being able to find workers because the work force is too entitled and think they deserve more than they do.
Theres a common joke about surnames in Korea. My father once told me: "So if you go all the way up to Seoul (Namsan) Tower and drop a rock down from the top, chances are your going to hit either a Lee, a Park, or a Kim 100%" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Last names were a thing in Sweden way before they started writing them down. Up until the mid to late 1800s, Swedes always took their father's first name then followed by either 'son' or 'dotter' as their last name, depending on if they're male or female. This was a thing even before the Viking age.
This is similar to why South Koreans all share like ten different surnames. Only the nobility had surnames. Once it was widely adopted, people just took the name of their local lord.
Somebody was naming people in his phone according to their jobs, like "John plumber", "Sally hairdresser", "Bob landlord" and then had the realization that's how we got a lot of the surnames we have now.
i remember john green talking about how history should include much more about disease than we normally teach, since we mostly focus on war, politics, natural disasters as shapers of history... but this story is another great example of how powerfully disease has shaped world history.
This is what Annales historiographers tried to do way back in 1920. WW1 had just ended,France was celebrating The Treaty of Versailles and BOOM. Here comes the Great depression. people tried looking at history to see how they could drag themselves outta this mess but what do you know- No records of anything except wars!
I think this attitude (at least for now) has changed with COVID and we weren't even screwed by the disease itself. We were screwed 10x harder by governments refusing to fully re-open the economy for over a year. And before someone cries, just know that you were SUPER privileged if you were able to work from home. Tbh, I think we're seeing mass layoffs and AI replacements because all these companies realized what jobs are fake thanks to COVID.
In norway, we have also have a wide list of names that came about in the aftermath of the Black Death. An example would be "Ødegaard" which quite literally means "desolate farm". When every resident at a farm died of the plague or fled, someone else would move in and take over the now abandoned farm, and thus their name would be "firstname ødegaard".
@@eugeniabarsukova Sure, but they were still used as identifiers, contrary to in the UK where the poor only had one name. I’d still consider them surnames. Iceland, Korea etc still almost exclusively use patronyms to this day.
In Sweden we have surnames that are basically called "Soldier Names". Since commoners didn't have surnames and you couldn't call out to the four Johan and Sven in a group, people got surnames such as "Brave", "Sword", "Mountain", "Shield. Modig, Svärd, Berg, Sköld. When those people left the army they kept the surnames. A soldier could also get their surname from the specific cottage they stayed at." Soldattorp" as they were called. That's how my family got our surname, some soldier on my paternal side lived in Höje, got surnamed based on that, and then kept the name.
Does a surname of Næss exist in Sweden? My ancestors came from Norway, but my DNA shows more Swedish on my paternal side, so the Næss family may have moved west from Sweden generations before that.
I like Jim Gaffigans joke on this because his last name means "highly anxious" and that fact that one of his ancestors was so anxious that that became his name made him "highly anxious" lmao
@@lidijakrneta3137 why would they not have a word for anxious? Anxiety is one of the most basic emotions, theres gunna be a word for it in every language
@@lidijakrneta3137 It's an Irish name. We've been able to express the full gamut of human emotion in Irish for at least a few millennia at this point.
Thomas the tree cutter became Tom Sawyer. Vincent the barrel-maker became Alice Cooper. Theodore the happy became Teddy Ruxpin. Reginald the fair-haired Dutchman became Elton John, et al.
Speaking of surnames, no two strangers have the same last name in Thailand. It's a very interesting law! Thai law prevents people from creating a surname that duplicates that of another family. Therefore, Thai citizens have been made to adopt surnames that are longer and more complex in order to keep them unique. Our government will not allow anyone of the two same last names to marry because chances are, they are most likely related to you.
This is the consequence of totalitarian Communist regimes. Your government will refuse to marry you because of your *name*? Sounds like a CCP dictatorship to me. Next they’ll tell you to name your children a certain name, and give them haircuts like the great leader, and eventually you’ll end up as another cog in the Red war machine
I'm not sure if I understood this correctly, but does that mean that when a mother gives birth to a child, the child will have a completely different surname and not take the surname of the father? (This is the custom in my country)
@@Eva_Reyes i am not thai but batak and we have surnames aswell: your children are not strangers (it says no two strangers), so i think they take the surname.
In Norway, surnames were often tied to the farm you lived at. And now, a fairly common surname is "Ødegård", which translates to "desolate farm". This name came about when, in the aftermath of the Black Death, people took over the abandoned farms left behind by the dead. Often not knowing the old name of the farm, they would simply call it desolate farm.
@@chaymberr_crafts that's common, for a female I'll give a famous name Linda Ronstadt shortened from Ronsdatter Rons Daughter. I am told I have old family names like Halfdan the Black.
In Georgia (country) we have many fancy surnames dating from middle ages, like mine literally means "child/son of storm", my friend's "child/son of lion"
Surnames usually came from the jobs or nicknames too. My surname literally means dates (fruit) in Arabic bcuz my great great great (great?) grandad was a date farmer and vendor.
And if for whatever reason you didn't make it into town when the census people came around, your surname was likely decided on this basis by the other townsfolk when the census people asked them who you were and what you did. Which is why we sometimes see negative descriptors as surnames "Who lives in the cottage up on that hill over there, and what can you tell me about him?" "Oh, that's John. He's a robber; stole my goat and wagon" So the census taker writes down "John Robber; lives up on the hill outside of town" in the official record Adam Savage brought this up in a Tested vid when one of the question askers had the surname "Hinderer." Adam went on a tangent and thought it was funny that somewhere down the line, this viewer's however many greats ago grandfather pissed ppl off and got in the way so much they told the census ppl that's what his name was
For the people scrolling by: That means that it used to be the case that the only taxes an average person would pay would be if they were among the richest peasants and owned their own physical land. Taxes were not everywhere in life like they are these days. And the government ran much, much better, too. This idea is a seed and branch towards many VERY IMPORTANT ideas that you should learn about to be a grounded person who has a lot of awareness about the world around them.
@@Thalanox the question of taxes is not that simple. Surfs and slaves worked the land and took care of the lord's properties in exchange for a place to live and sustenance. Both were bound to their condition, and their condition was passed from parents to children. "Medieval Serfs were peasants who worked his lord's land and paid him certain dues in return for the use of land, the possession (not the ownership) of which was heritable. The dues were usually in the form of labor on the lord's land. Medieval Serfs were expected to work for approximately 3 days each week on the lord's land. A serf was one bound to work on a certain estate, and thus attached to the soil, and sold with it into the service of whoever purchases the land" I am not sure being part of the commoners was ideal either.
When they started using surnames in my country, my great grandfather just used his grandfathers name but it was already taken in his town so he added his job to it and now my family has a surname that is common if it was only one of the words but the 2 together is only for them And when i tried to change my surname to theirs (its my mothers surname), the government didn't allow it because the amount of people borned in that town with that surname was a lot and they are all my family
Surnames often were just your job, too, or who your parent was. We have families called "Bakersons", for example, cuz once upon a time they were the "Bakers-son". Language is fun.
@@FlowHD I mean the 1400s were a wild time and i wouldn’t be surprised if some rich greek dude actually did that (considering they did a lot of things with young boys…)
Actually, I heard it was so that witches couldn't have power over you if you had a secret hidden name. They would need to say your full name and if you had the hidden name, they couldn't.
@@iowafarmboy I looked it up for you. I am... Wrong sadly 😔 families couldn't decide between giving the family name or the name of a saint, so the middle name was created as a "baptismal" second name.
And he might have ended up as Sven Farmer. That's how many peasant surnames came to be. John the Smith became John Smith. John who lives on the hill became John Hill.
Well it happened in Sweden in the 1800s because people started moving around then. But Sweden was never a feudal society and the Swedish court system was rigid and secure enough that land holdings under farmers never had any issue with a patronomic system.
And then there's my ancestors, two brother called Samuel and Daniel who lived in the same tiny midlands town, probably on the same street if not in the same house, who both named one of their sons Joseph in the mid-1700s. And then both of those Josephs married a woman called Anne. In the same church.
In my family tree, two of the sons in one family were named John and Jonathan. Or what really gets me-- and this happened frequently-- if the child died young, they'd just re-use the name on the next kid. So much for believing in the soul....
Surnames was only introduced in Thailand 110 years ago, and they all had to be unique to your family, so if you find someone with the same surname as you, you’re related, don’t date them
I'm part tatar ( minuscule ethnic minority) in Romania, we're only a handful and all the people with my family name seem to stem from the same village. so your statement is super valid for my situation as well. XD
No shit same surname do not necessary related. These is a facebook group with people of the same surname as me in facebook about 600 members and we do not even know eachother
When Native Americans had to report to various census takers, a lot of them were unfamiliar with the surname concept. So you get last names like “Sixkiller” or “Tenkiller” because buddies in line would try to one-up each other. Sometimes you’ll see surnames like “Brown” or “Chickadee” because it’s the first thing somebody thought of. You still see those surnames today.
I know of an American with the surname "Nemerton" who is a descendant of Hungarian immigrants. When his ancestor disembarked in the early 1900s and got asked his name, he didn't understand English, so he answered "I don't understand" ("Nem értem").
Prior to written census records, surnames or nicknames were used to distinguish all the Toms, Dicks and Harrys from each other. One guildmaster in Bristol in the 1200s was John Redhead, John Carpenter, John Halfhand, or John Gray, depending on the year and the recording clerk.
I like the “son of” surnames. Like Jacobson, Williamson, Johnson, Thompson. And even better are the Fitz names because, if I remember right, somewhere down the line there was a “bastard” son of some upper echelon, usually nobility, so to distinguish the “cast off” from the “legitimate heir” they attached Fitz(which literally means Son Of) to the given name of the father and made it the child’s surname, hence Fitzwilliam, Fitzgerald, Fitzhubert, and whole bunch of other Fitzes in the world. One group wanted to establish a family name while the others wanted to distinguish which child would inherit.
Yeah my partner has a fairly common first and last name and I tagged him in a Facebook post, well, I tried to. I tagged another person with the same name, but what was more awkward about tagging some random dude on a relationship post was it was a guy FROM THE CITY I LIVE IN. I had mutuals with him 😭
If you were a blacksmith, you were John Smith. If you were a Mason, you were John Mason. A lot of last names were based on people's profession. Archer, Barber, Bowman, Brewer, Butler, Carpenter, Carver, Cook, Draper, Farmer, Fisher, Forester, Fowler, Gardener, Hunter, Mason, Miller, Piper, Potter, Sadler, Sheppard, Shoemaker, Skinner, Tanner, Taylor, Weaver, Wheeler, etc
Chinese have long had surnames but they tend to identify more with a region. Among the Chinese diaspora its common to ask someone with the same surname which region their family came from. And if it's a similar region they'd start delving into details down to the village level . So for example a friend of mine had gone to school with a girl who had the same surname. They'd never got to comparing notes until years later but they started poking around and discovered that they were in fact cousins.
Can confirm as a Chinese. My surname Xi 郗is actually not that common in China as it’s usually found in the ShanXi province in northwestern China where it originated. Also peasants throughout the dynasties usually took surnames from emperors and nobility, so for example Li 李 and Zhao赵 are both common surnames found in China today that were two emperors’ surnames as well(from the Tang and Song dynasties)
In Japan before 1868 surnames/family names were only for the samurai nobility and those in the imperial court, but His Majesty Emperor Meiji decreed that everyone must have a surname/family name. So people just started calling themselves whatever they wanted. Interestingly enough this lead to a lot of people having Satō as a surname
Interesting enough quite by coincidence I'm sure. My surname means "weaver" and my hobby is crocheting. I don't know much about my ancestors but I can say for certain if they created their own surname because they were weavers and I myself enjoy fiber arts then I got it honestly 😊
In Scotland, there are common surnames like MacLeod, MacDonald, MacGregor, etc. The "Mac" means "son of". So, MacDougal means son of Dougal. However, many of the people with these surnames were not actually direct descendants of the clan chief but adopted the surname to denote that they belonged to that clan.
Exactly the same happens in Greek. The ancient way of saying "son of" is IDES (Simonides etc.). The modern way is OPOULOS (ex. Spyropoulos, Papadopoulos = son of a priest), and the Turkish way that found its way with the 400-year occupation is OGLOU (ex. Hatzoglou, Sismanoglou etc.) And of course there are all those Skandinavian names finishing in -SON or -SSON (which again means "son of").
@irmar then you also have the middle eastern names that are basically the same but limited to the father and not usually passed down until recently like ben/bin [father's name].
In Korea it was similar, only rich nobles had last names. But at a certain point they ended up selling off the use of their last names to commoners. That's why there are often a lot of people with the same last name who aren't related in korea
Thats because Korea is corrupt, my last name is a extremely rare because it didnt start in Korea and is basically one of the only "real" names. All these Kim Lee Park Suh and Joes have to have their origin attached to figure out who the real lineages are and even then they most likely bought the books to hide their identities
It's a slippery slope! First they wanna have two names, then they'll have four, and soon enough we'll end up with 400 names in a single person which GOES AGAINST GOD AND NATURE!
In Arab tradition, you usually have your fathers name as a last name. So if your dad is named Ahmed and your name is Mehdi, you’ll be Mehdi Ibn Ahmed. Ibn meaning son of, however when colonisation happened, we switched to the surnames system. In my family for instance, my dad is the first generation to bear a proper last name.
We do that here(and still do)(malaysia) But its a bit different, we use bin for males(means son of) and binti for females (means daughter of). Also, im not sure if its only apply to indians but they use a/l(anak lelaki ; son of) or a/p(anak perempuan; daughter of ) For example : adam bin idris, prishya a/p rohan People's names here are kinda long compared to english people
I think that take is a bit oversimplified. Arabs have always kept track of lineage. Yes we are named after our father but we are also supposed to know our forefather. Because of this we have a bunch of "middle names" which consists of forefather's names as far back as we can go (hundreds of years back). Then when it comes to tribes and history there are whole professions of ancestry recorders on that subject, but each tribe knows their origins going back hundreds to thousands of years back. This is a cultural thing and potentially a reason why Arabian horses (or animals in general) are so sought after since they are pure bred and have their lineage tracked.
In the Philippines we had Spanish surnames given to us just so our colonizers can distinguish us with recognizable names. And in my local island, depending on the name of your town you'll get a surname whose first letter matches that of the town. This was to make census easier on the colonizing government to arrange which people to which town. Later on the country was sold to America and to appeal to the new rulers the weathy and middle class locals named their children American and English names. This is why if you meet a Filipino you would often find them having an English first name and a Spanish last name like "John Michael Gonzales" .
@@l4d1k06 I honestly thought Jennifer Lopez was Filipino for a while lmao. But then I realized some second to third generation latin immigrants also followed similar naming convention.
"Alrighty now. Let everyone have a surname based on their labor." Everyone: Shoemaker, Smith, Bowman, Farmer, Hunter, Skinner... and then there's Moderfoker.
It's so true. Education has to catch up with technologies potential. I can imagine Ted Talk quality presentations should be the norm with classroom teachers acting more like TA's
Lucky to have a history teacher who doesn’t just read the text book but tells hypothetical stories that are actually quite interesting 😭 asks a lot of what ifs makes it a very interactive class
The historian Barbara Tuchman (in her DISTANT MIRROR book) asserts that this was also the period where unionzed workers began. Kings refused to let families flee the King's city (full of disease and death) because the King lost craftsmen and workers. Well, they still left and then negotiated - "You want tus to stay, then we're banding together and need uniform protections."
Jewish people, worldwide, have ancient surnames. They came from the father and from which tribe the father belonged. When you see a name like David Ben Gurion, “Ben” means son of. His full name, which isn’t used in common day-to-day, would include his tribe. My name is: Ziona Bas Aharon ha Kohen. Ziona- my Hebrew first name. Bas or Bat- daughter of Aharon- my father’s first name Ha Kohen- the tribe of the high priest. One of the oldest surnames on earth is Kohen/ Cohen/ Kohn/ Cohane, etc. This name is from Aaron (Hebrew Aharon, like my father,) who was Moses’ brother. We trace our lineage back that far. Jesus was Yeshua Ben Yoseph Ha Levi, or the tribe of Levite. That said, what you taught is brilliant. Thanks!
It's why names from place names are rarely the big cities. When people _went_ to cities, they needed to differentiate themselves by referring to the small places they came from. There are far more people called Tipperton than London.
The reason we have Surnames here in Sweden was because they started to document where everyone lived. And they realised alot of people just didnt have surnames but had the same name. Usualy a person would be named "David" and then where they where from or lived. For example "David from Hult" So the state said that they had to give themselves surnames. And that is why we have god tier surnames like "Hammarsköld" (Hammer-Shield) or "Hård" (Hard) That lead to people being called Sten Hård (Rock Hard) for example.
@@dorrolorro Efternamn kom efter vad man gjorde eller vart man bodde under medeltiden, fast det var mer för att folk kan ha haft samma förnamn. Som till exempel. Jag heter Daniel, om det fans en till Daniel i byn skulle det kanske kalla mig Daniel Smed, för det var det jag gjorde. Eller kanske ett namn för att jag bor brevid skogen. Så Daniel Skog. Under sent 1800 tal till 1901 var det faststält i lag at man ska ha ett efternamn. Då blev alla Johansson, Eriksson, osv. Namn som Lindquist är namn som har sats ihop. Att linda och Kvist. Kan vara så att personerna som hade detta namn när det blev lag, gillade att linda kvistar med varandra, eller gjorde korgar av just kvistar.
Yes, it really did-- for those who had been dirt poor serfs before the catastrophe. The rich suddenly began to have difficulty finding "good help", and had to pay far more for that help, so their own prospects were presumably diminished. The law of supply and demand inched English society just a bit closer to equity. Serfs-- slaves, after all-- became working class people with the ability to make their own choices.
Imagine old people back then being like "We didn't have all this surname shit back in my day" lol
In my country we were always called by 3 names so basically name,daughter of, who is a son of.
So when you name someone you need to have an original name, then of the father and of the grandfather.
Nowadays it’s just original name, father name and family name; the grandfather name is removed which made my grandma very cranky lol
@@JustMeDidii was going to say the same thing , we don't use surnames
That's right, we used to step in wooly mammoth shit too! on our way to work building henges.
@@olddoggeleventy2718 and ride dinosaurs to school
😂😂😂 wow thank you
"What's your name?"
"John Johnson"
"You need to be more specific"
Swedish names be like Johannes Johan Johansson
I worked in a bank and one customers name was Robert Robert Roberts. I also worked with a guy named Gerard Ball, and his daughters name was Annette (say her name). We also had a women whose first name was Tess, and she married a man whose surname was Tickle (she kept her maiden name). I'm not making this up. These were actual people I knew (some only briefly).
John Johnson, John Johnsons son
"I am John, my father was John, whats not clicking"
This reminds me of Johnson from the law firm Johnson and Johnson.
Here in Scotland we have had them for ages, to distinguish clans and septs. Usually with the format Mac(followed by the surname, usually the name of the first defined cheif) and the "Mac" can be switched with "Mc". It means "son of". Eg- MacDougall / McDougall (meaning son of dougall)
@@DaibhidhBhoAlba fr, and yet we led the way with inventions, innovation and later, videogames. With rockstar north creating red dead and GTA, as well as 4J studios with their role in Minecraft. "They are Scottish crack heads in their sheds, until they invent something, then they are British geniuses" it's fine tho, we r used to ut
My grandma was Scottish; she was very braggadocious about her clan, Mackenzie, to be specific. Although I may not remember all that she spoke of because I was little, she did give me her tartan and plaque, which resembled the crest. Rip Grandma.
In Wales, we had our own system as well! It basically works like this:
Your name is Llywelyn
Your dad's name is Dafydd
Your full name is then Llywelyn ap Dafydd
(ab/ap meaning "son of")
your son would then be
*chosen first name* ap Llywelyn
@@eniej very similar to the Scottish clan system then, cool! Is it the name of your dad you take or the name of the clan founder? Because for use "Mc" or "Mac" means "son of" but the last bit is the clan founder or first chief
My grandad ancestry can be traced to Scotland his surname was Kendrick.
Before the British colonised us, people of my ethnic group in Nigeria took their mother's name as their surnames. So if their mother's name was Kolo, their surname would be Kolobe (bé being a possessive suffix like -s or -son in English).
While we now use traditional surnames, we still have a few of the old ones which have still survived.
That's interesting 🤔
I wonder if it's because of polygamy that african children got their mother's name rather than their father's name
@@dxmxrxsbxxckthxwxxdxlf3931 interesting thought. It’s possible. Our culture back then was community parenting. A child was everyone’s child. You can straight up walk into your neighbour’s house and eat meals, even help with the chores. In polygamous houses, a father can decide to mix up the kids so a child would be raised by a stepmother, or even learn her language, if it’s different to his. So in this environment, it is possible that it would be easier to identify a kid with their mother’s name, rather than their father’s.
I hope everyone there gets to reclaim their surnames one day!
@@pacotaco1246 I don't think there's anything stopping anyone from doing so.
And then a ridiculous amount of them went "well, I'm a smith of some kind, I'll just use Smith as my surname."
i read somewhere that smiths, like blacksmiths, were a very desirable profession. if everyone was taking their profession as their last name, i bet a good chunk of the Smiths were actually people trying to trick others into think that they or their family are smiths.
Well metal workers would have been everywhere so it does make sense that it would have been a common surname. Like all the other common trade surnames really. I expect every village had one of each at a minimum.
@@jeanettemullins yeah, doesn't change the fact that there are an obscene amount of people with the surname Smith, to the point that John Smith became the stereotypical British male name.
In India - many people have names such as Furniturewala or carpenterwala or batliwala.
Wala - meaning person or man it essentially translated to Furniture man etc .
It’s pretty hilarious and those surnames are relatively new only since the British occupation regardless it’s pretty funny
@@CeruleanStar Names like "Smith" or "Baker" are so common, because during wartime, invading armies would keep those trades alive for weapons and food.
Is that why a lot of surnames are professions ?
Yes
Or end in "son". Literally designating "you are the son of".
Johnson = John's son
Williamson = william's son
Etc etx
Or the Scottish version. Mc or Mac means ‘son of’ so McDonald is son of Donald. And the Irish version too. ‘O’ meaning ‘of’. So O’Neil means ‘of Neil’ or basically ‘son of Neil’
It's most often a patronym/ after the father (Fitzroy, Richardson, Andrews,McDonald, O'Connor) or from a place your ancestors came from (Pond, in french and dutch we have a lot of people named after Bridges and Cities/Regions that's why all of the 'De' last names don't always refer to nobility in french) or as you mentioned a job (Smith, Baker, Taylor, Thatcher) if you cannot relate it to anything on this list it's most likely from another language or relates to something that people back then would recognize instantly but people have forgotten about since
@@Spiklething I’m part Scottish my first name is very Scottish
Lord: Why is he called Dickinson?
Townsfolk: You don't wanna know m'lord
oml this is underrated LOL
😂😂😂😂😂 proper funny that 👏🏼
😂
😂😂😂
John from Amsterdam just became John the blacksmith 😂
"That's John with the ripped trousers and that Jon with the cheating wife"
"Okay, so here's Alex Stronghammer, he's a blacksmith. Joseph Carver, he's a woodcarver. Meet Henry Farmer, he's, well, its self explanatory. Ah and can't forget Jacob Dickinson."
"Excuse me, what did you just say his name was?"
"Jacob Dickinson"
"Wha-what's his profession?"
"OH, he's the head priest."
@@prototype23a18 hey hey! 🥁
100 points for writing out the sketch.
He would be Jon Cornutto
Ah John Hoewife. Good lad, terrible wife
👀
Leonardo da Vinci doesn't have a surname. da Vinci is not a surname. It means "from Vinci". Vinci is a town near Florence. So he's just Leonardo from that town Vinci.
Well in Italy we also have surnames created for orphans or surnames based on a specific trait of a person or even surnames coming from ancient Roman family names
While the rest of Europe was a place dominated by rural feudal lords, in Italy since the XI century cities began to get rich, self-rule themselves, and grow in population. People who moved to cities had to register themselves into city censuses with their names + the name of their fathers + the place of origin/the name of an ancestor/a nickname that could identify them. That's how Italian surnames developed, the most common Italian last names are, in fact, nicknames: (Rossi=Red(head)s, Bianchi= Whites, Grosso=Big) professions (Ferrari= Smiths, Pastore=Shepherd, Cuoco= Cook), places of origin (Fiorentini=from Florence, Romano=from Rome, Genovesi= from Genoa) or name of an ancestor (Di Marco= of Mark, Di Pietro= of Peter).
I do genealogy and a lot of surnames are like that. For instance several generations back I have an Albert de Reede, which just means he's from that town.
@@2fortsmostwanted My last name describes a place
These old surnames are still around
@@jacopopiazzardi8320 Kaley Cuoco is just Kaley Cook
That's much less exotic
I was like no it was Napoleon, but then she said in england
Another fun fact about the Black Death and surnames: here in Norway a lot of farmsteads were left desolate because entire families died, which led to the farmsteads, and their new inhabitants in turn, being called Ødegård/Ødegaard, meaning "desolate farm". It's a relatively common Norwegian surname now!
they just made their own last names, our last names are a result of our ancestors silliness and creativity. The first usernames lol
when comunists seized power in russia they forced everyone to have surnames(those who didn't). It happened that jewish people didn't have them so comunists forced them to get them. And it wasn't like "choose a surname" no, no, no. They said "there is a list of surnames(and the surnames were of a limited amount, for example just x people could take the surname x), choose from the list". And if you wanted a good surname, you should pay to comunists. If you didn't have money, you got a surname like "pooper"
Pam, pam. I heard it from a jewish from russia when he explained the origin of his surname, and the surname was, I don't remember, something like "pooper". So no creativity reflection. Just comunists' policy.
that's.. pretty crazy lmao
johnson makes a whole lot more sense now
Idk how they got Simon as my families surname
@@imnotgaybut7673 Lack of creativity
My mother used to joke that her first husband's ancestors must've had the most boring job ever because their surname is Sorters. 😂
Sorter comes from "salter", and people who made salt were very important as they hadn't invented the refrigerator yet ;)
The Sorting Hat disagrees.
@@flynnmorrow6945No, no, no. It's the Salty Hat.
I have a fancy last name that just vaguely means “protector” and possibly a connection to a Scottish clan from 200 years ago
@@Arwen_XIVNow im thinking about a hat thats still salty about something that happened years ago
In Serbia surnames became officially established around 1851.
In the past people people identified themselves with their tribe or clan or their place of origin.
In 1842 Prince Mihailo Obrenović issued a decree encouraging people to choose fixed surnames, but it wasn't widely adopted, and in 1851 finally Prince Aleksandar Karađorđević issued a stricter decree requiring everyone to have a fixed surname.
This decree aimed to modernize the administration and create a more stable family structure.
We use patronymics such as adding "-vić" (son of) or "-ović" (grandson of) to the father's name. For example, Marko's son would be Marković.
In Nigeria we had lastnames Always Showing your connection to a family
This is why a vast majority of surnames are either occupational (potter, fletcher, smith, Taylor, baker), locational (any surname derived from a town name or location, like my own) or ‘first name-son’ denoting you as ‘son of X’ (Johnson, Williams, Jackson, Thompson)
Guess what my surname (Neufeld) means in German :P
@@marzipanmango new field?
I looked my last name meaning up years ago and it turned out my last name means merchant
My name is another term for Brown. I guess they were like “We’ve got too many Browns already, change a few letters and see what you come up with. Yeah, that’ll do.” 😂
And done one's daughter, in Iceland. Somethingsdottir
Most surnames in Germany derived from the profession of someone. Like "Bäcker "(baker), "Müller" (Miller), "Kaufmann" (Tradesman), "Fischer", "Bauer" (Farmer), "Metzger" (Butcher), "Vogt" (Bailiff), etc. You get the point. Its because when you would look out for a person who had a common name, lets say "Peter", you would go through the village and look out for "Peter" the "Miller", and people would know where you could find him.
PRECISION GERMAN ENGINEERING
Deutsch qualität
My surname is Krüger
mine is a town name. it's in Poland now
Yep, that's true of very many English names as well. Fisher/Fischer, Miller, Baker, etc. are common names in the English world as well. Kauffman and various Anglicizations (word I made up) like Coffman are common here too.
And that's how me, as a Jamaican, came by the name Johnson😂🤷🏿
Makes sense. The Norman Side of the family (my.grandmother), the Gordons of the house of Gordon were practically Scottish royalty. My father's side on the hand, the McVicars, were criminals that ended up on the convict boats to Australia. The Gordons I would imagine traveled in absolute style.
Contact lists in phone are filled with “Jeremy Plumber” or “Mary Florist” which is just an extension of how surnames came into being in the first place
How about 'Andrew Meat'?🤣
Or John Bootycall
Ivona cox 😂
@@jsworpin 😂😂😂😂 BTW, in Ukraine we have surname Притула (Prytula), it means 'Foreplay, petting'🤣
Surnames started when human communities became so large that given names started to repeat. Too many Johns and Janes in one town. To prevent confusion, people started adding family names. So that John Winston is different from John Walterson. The woman in the video is lying for clout.
my name is Klein (Little/Small) and I just kinda love that I keep a family tradition alive even thousands of years later... being 5.3foot (163cm) of pure hate.
I love this for a short 👑💪
In short, I'm a little bit amused...
I'm also 5'3 and pure hate 😂 it's always us short ones
@@TotallyRandomSkunk that's still short dude 😂
Small N angy
In Holland, surnames were there in the 17th century, but were not often used, at least not in smaller towns. Patronyms were mostly used at baptisms and funerals. Marriages tend to use surnames more often. Until 1811 the church took care of the registrations, although there were some courts and civil governments in places. But the way the church registered these events was erratic to say the least. Even first names were mixed up, and the funerals of women were often registered as "the wife of" followed by her husband's name. If a child was born, the husband sometimes became married to the sister of his wife, at least it was written in the church register that way. Mostly the patronym was used when a child was, sometimes but rarely the surname. There was no consistency. These practices, combined with only one clergyman for several towns, made it completely chaotic and risky, and that is why genealogy before 1811 becomes increasingly harder.
So after 1811 it became a civil service, using surnames and the different generations were also explicitly mentioned, eg. parents of both husband and wife were registered in marriages.
I wonder if that's where surnames with son came from like Johnson as John's son and Willamson as William's son.
I love facts like these because it always makes me think of more questions than answers 😂
The Scottish Mac prefix, the Dutch ap prefix, and the Middle Eastern Ibn prefix all mean "son of", as well.
So when they couldn't find workers, they paid more to get people to work? They didn't say, "people don't want to work anymore". Crazy.
😂 truth
They probably said that when they died from the plague 🙄
That’s still a thing. They didn’t raise the minimum wage of workers everywhere. If they had, there would be no competitive incentives.
they tried it lol
There's a massive difference between not being able to find workers because an enormous amount of the eligible work force died and not being able to find workers because the work force is too entitled and think they deserve more than they do.
Theres a common joke about surnames in Korea. My father once told me:
"So if you go all the way up to Seoul (Namsan) Tower and drop a rock down from the top, chances are your going to hit either a Lee, a Park, or a Kim 100%"
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
😂😂😂😂😂
This reminds me of the joke you're mama's so fat that that has mere Chins than a Chinese phone book.
Same for Patel in India 😂
“Go with Lee, there’s a million Lee’s” Master Piandao
@@rechitsapivo one of my best friends growing up was named Raj Patel. Asking other Indians if they knew him always brought a smile at the leasr
I just learned something new. Thank you. 😊
Reminds me of a clip I saw on here of a WWII show where the guys name was Major Major because his dad was a prankster lol
Meanwhile in Sweden us peasants were ordered to make up surnames so that the book keeping would be easier to handle 🤣
This was a pretty big reason why various places gave people surnames at various times.
Kinda necessary when nearly all men are named Lars or Anders😅
The surname book keeping has truly pave the way for this furture we are living- accountable
same in the Netherlands
Last names were a thing in Sweden way before they started writing them down. Up until the mid to late 1800s, Swedes always took their father's first name then followed by either 'son' or 'dotter' as their last name, depending on if they're male or female. This was a thing even before the Viking age.
This is similar to why South Koreans all share like ten different surnames. Only the nobility had surnames. Once it was widely adopted, people just took the name of their local lord.
In China it was similar. Family names were more clan affiliation than true surnames.
Well, it's more complicated than that, with many more surnames able to be traced back to a single patriarch (usually from China), but generally, sure
Yep, clan names.
Incorrect.
@@veritas88n4 Nice to meet you incorrect, I'm Dad
Harry “Willy” Johnson has been fumbling around in Ms. Knickers garden again. ☕️
Could you do a video of you saying like different insults? Idk, with your voice it just seems like it would sound really cool🤷♂️😊
Somebody was naming people in his phone according to their jobs, like "John plumber", "Sally hairdresser", "Bob landlord" and then had the realization that's how we got a lot of the surnames we have now.
Actually, a lot of surnames referred to the father's given name: Erikson - son of Erik, Johnson - son of John, Coulson - son of Coul, etc...
Kids in 2170: "Why are there so many people with the last name Tinder?"
Lol this is exCtly what i do to remember where i know them from
@@HariSeldon913 but there's no need for the "actually" you're both right. Jobs and father's names are both the origin of a lot of surnames
@@HariSeldon913 what about Dickinson?
i remember john green talking about how history should include much more about disease than we normally teach, since we mostly focus on war, politics, natural disasters as shapers of history... but this story is another great example of how powerfully disease has shaped world history.
medicine is a third of the history GCSE we do not need more of it 😭
Hell, the black death changed feudalism in europe
This is what Annales historiographers tried to do way back in 1920. WW1 had just ended,France was celebrating The Treaty of Versailles and BOOM. Here comes the Great depression.
people tried looking at history to see how they could drag themselves outta this mess but what do you know- No records of anything except wars!
We really do need to talk about history other than doing the 'great man' narrative.
I think this attitude (at least for now) has changed with COVID and we weren't even screwed by the disease itself. We were screwed 10x harder by governments refusing to fully re-open the economy for over a year.
And before someone cries, just know that you were SUPER privileged if you were able to work from home. Tbh, I think we're seeing mass layoffs and AI replacements because all these companies realized what jobs are fake thanks to COVID.
She's just too cute. What a gem.
*Reads guideline to imagine I’m at a dinner party* *gracefully exits chat*
Joe Dickinson have been real quiet about his surname when this dropped
Most of the time, surnames ending in -son mean "son of". So Dickinson would probably be "son of Dickin" which is still very funny
@@Arwen_XIVson of Dick/Richard
Dick is short for Richard so its actually Richard's son
I know a guy, who's surname is " Haseneier" which means " testicles of a rabbit "😂
uhm... that last name can be taken very badly ._.
In norway, we have also have a wide list of names that came about in the aftermath of the Black Death. An example would be "Ødegaard" which quite literally means "desolate farm". When every resident at a farm died of the plague or fled, someone else would move in and take over the now abandoned farm, and thus their name would be "firstname ødegaard".
But even before that we had surnames which were first name + son/daughter of fathers name.
@@peacefulminimalist2028 those were patronymics though, not surnames
@@eugeniabarsukova Sure, but they were still used as identifiers, contrary to in the UK where the poor only had one name. I’d still consider them surnames. Iceland, Korea etc still almost exclusively use patronyms to this day.
@@peacefulminimalist2028 This was used also here in Finland and some still use it 😊
@@peacefulminimalist2028But now most people in western countries use surnames as patronyms.
I could listen to you talk for hours.❤
This lady looks like she's an extra on Harry Potter.
In Sweden we have surnames that are basically called "Soldier Names". Since commoners didn't have surnames and you couldn't call out to the four Johan and Sven in a group, people got surnames such as "Brave", "Sword", "Mountain", "Shield. Modig, Svärd, Berg, Sköld.
When those people left the army they kept the surnames.
A soldier could also get their surname from the specific cottage they stayed at." Soldattorp" as they were called. That's how my family got our surname, some soldier on my paternal side lived in Höje, got surnamed based on that, and then kept the name.
Yep, I have one of those soldier surnames, Storm (same in English as in Swedish).
Does a surname of Næss exist in Sweden? My ancestors came from Norway, but my DNA shows more Swedish on my paternal side, so the Næss family may have moved west from Sweden generations before that.
@@Katness07 we don't use æ but Nääs/Näs exists as a last name, it means isthmus and is also a part of other surnames (Näslund, etc)
Soldier names.... 🤣
You fcks stopped fighting when Christianity took over
@Nina M I know it did change to Ness at some point before my great grandfather left Norway, around 1907-1910.
I like Jim Gaffigans joke on this because his last name means "highly anxious" and that fact that one of his ancestors was so anxious that that became his name made him "highly anxious" lmao
I don't think they even had a word anxious, let alone knew what it mean
@@lidijakrneta3137 why would they not have a word for anxious? Anxiety is one of the most basic emotions, theres gunna be a word for it in every language
@@lidijakrneta3137 It's an Irish name. We've been able to express the full gamut of human emotion in Irish for at least a few millennia at this point.
Thomas the tree cutter became Tom Sawyer.
Vincent the barrel-maker became Alice Cooper.
Theodore the happy became Teddy Ruxpin.
Reginald the fair-haired Dutchman became Elton John, et al.
I mean Romans had surnames
Family names appear to have developed first in China, originally among the nobility 4000-3000 BC.
As someone Scottish I was about to immediately comment before I read the description.
Speaking of surnames, no two strangers have the same last name in Thailand. It's a very interesting law! Thai law prevents people from creating a surname that duplicates that of another family. Therefore, Thai citizens have been made to adopt surnames that are longer and more complex in order to keep them unique. Our government will not allow anyone of the two same last names to marry because chances are, they are most likely related to you.
Hi I'm John Smithadocious_xx69xx
This is the consequence of totalitarian Communist regimes. Your government will refuse to marry you because of your *name*? Sounds like a CCP dictatorship to me. Next they’ll tell you to name your children a certain name, and give them haircuts like the great leader, and eventually you’ll end up as another cog in the Red war machine
That makes so much sense as to why all the Thai people I know have like 18 letters in their surnames lol
I'm not sure if I understood this correctly, but does that mean that when a mother gives birth to a child, the child will have a completely different surname and not take the surname of the father? (This is the custom in my country)
@@Eva_Reyes i am not thai but batak and we have surnames aswell:
your children are not strangers (it says no two strangers), so i think they take the surname.
In Norway, surnames were often tied to the farm you lived at. And now, a fairly common surname is "Ødegård", which translates to "desolate farm". This name came about when, in the aftermath of the Black Death, people took over the abandoned farms left behind by the dead. Often not knowing the old name of the farm, they would simply call it desolate farm.
So Martin Ødegaard from Arsenal, had ancestors that was stricken so hard with the plague they didn't work their farmland... Interesting
Mine is from the family farm in Norway Brede Eng now Breding. It means Broad Meadow.
I find it really interesting. My Norwegian surname is Christianson, literally son of Christian
@@chaymberr_crafts that's common, for a female I'll give a famous name Linda Ronstadt shortened from Ronsdatter Rons Daughter. I am told I have old family names like Halfdan the Black.
Makes sence🤷♀️
In the beginning, I was like, yh, I actually knew that! Then I realised I'd watched this short before lol
In Georgia (country) we have many fancy surnames dating from middle ages, like mine literally means "child/son of storm", my friend's "child/son of lion"
Surnames usually came from the jobs or nicknames too. My surname literally means dates (fruit) in Arabic bcuz my great great great (great?) grandad was a date farmer and vendor.
Hebrew*
And if for whatever reason you didn't make it into town when the census people came around, your surname was likely decided on this basis by the other townsfolk when the census people asked them who you were and what you did. Which is why we sometimes see negative descriptors as surnames
"Who lives in the cottage up on that hill over there, and what can you tell me about him?"
"Oh, that's John. He's a robber; stole my goat and wagon"
So the census taker writes down "John Robber; lives up on the hill outside of town" in the official record
Adam Savage brought this up in a Tested vid when one of the question askers had the surname "Hinderer." Adam went on a tangent and thought it was funny that somewhere down the line, this viewer's however many greats ago grandfather pissed ppl off and got in the way so much they told the census ppl that's what his name was
In Arabic I thought our surnames are related to our lineage
@@50m31_AW that is such a cool new thing to learn! Thank you!
I wonder how my ancestors got the surname Luna
It’s good that she cleared the controversy and then explained, unlike others
what happened? I just kinda found her on youtube shorts
Huh?
in case your school didnt teach you: this also explains how surnames are jobs
She didn’t. This is not factual.
What do you mean controversy? Surnames aren’t controversial in the slightest
Fascinating! And now I finally understand my surname, Horrificdeathallaround. Who knew.
As an Osbourne - that’s too cool!
You have excellent verbal articulation. I could listen to you talk about the black death all day
That's very creepy tart boy.
Sierra India Mike Papa
😂😂😂
Plz be joking 💀
Simp
To be more precise, surnames were to identify people so they could pay their TAXES
exactly, citizens or anyone with property would be registered by family name.
Homeless with no property would be irrelevant
For the people scrolling by: That means that it used to be the case that the only taxes an average person would pay would be if they were among the richest peasants and owned their own physical land. Taxes were not everywhere in life like they are these days. And the government ran much, much better, too. This idea is a seed and branch towards many VERY IMPORTANT ideas that you should learn about to be a grounded person who has a lot of awareness about the world around them.
@@Thalanox “The government ran much better too.”
*Absolutionist France, Tsarist Russia and life expectancies enter the chat*
@@Thalanox the question of taxes is not that simple. Surfs and slaves worked the land and took care of the lord's properties in exchange for a place to live and sustenance. Both were bound to their condition, and their condition was passed from parents to children.
"Medieval Serfs were peasants who worked his lord's land and paid him certain dues in return for the use of land, the possession (not the ownership) of which was heritable. The dues were usually in the form of labor on the lord's land. Medieval Serfs were expected to work for approximately 3 days each week on the lord's land. A serf was one bound to work on a certain estate, and thus attached to the soil, and sold with it into the service of whoever purchases the land"
I am not sure being part of the commoners was ideal either.
@Thalanox conquistadors were a fantastic government eh. Stupid
When they started using surnames in my country, my great grandfather just used his grandfathers name but it was already taken in his town so he added his job to it and now my family has a surname that is common if it was only one of the words but the 2 together is only for them
And when i tried to change my surname to theirs (its my mothers surname), the government didn't allow it because the amount of people borned in that town with that surname was a lot and they are all my family
Key word ‘England’. The world is beyond England, and it’s HUGE, the rest of the world could have had surnames all along…
Surnames often were just your job, too, or who your parent was. We have families called "Bakersons", for example, cuz once upon a time they were the "Bakers-son". Language is fun.
same in india.... its not very uncommon to have surnames like 'Engineer' or 'Tyre wala' or 'Merchant'
Dickinson…
@@FlowHD I mean the 1400s were a wild time and i wouldn’t be surprised if some rich greek dude actually did that (considering they did a lot of things with young boys…)
@@FlowHD NGL, Dickinson is EXACTLY the name I was about to reply to this comment. 😆
@@FlowHD Dick in son 😦
and middle name was created by angry moms who wanted to extend the fear out when they scream your full name across the house
Actually, I heard it was so that witches couldn't have power over you if you had a secret hidden name. They would need to say your full name and if you had the hidden name, they couldn't.
@@GrumpyTy34er I have no idea if you're telling the truth or making that up. But I hope it's true, as it's pretty cool.
@@iowafarmboy I looked it up for you. I am... Wrong sadly 😔 families couldn't decide between giving the family name or the name of a saint, so the middle name was created as a "baptismal" second name.
@@GrumpyTy34er makes sense. But ya, not as fun as trying to stay safe from witches. Lol. Thank you, btw!
@@GrumpyTy34er that is........ Disappointing
Here in Norway the name Ødegaard/Ødegård became very common after the black death. It translates to "abonnded farm" in English.
Ok, i watched this over a year ago, and since then, it comes up EVERY TIME I SCROLL THE SHORTS!!!
John Smith meeting 38 other John smiths after moving for work : 👁️👄👁️
changes his name to John Dickinson
@@Retromagsnooo 😂
And at least 12 of them work as smith
👁️👄👁️
Changes name to John Doe.
We had this issue in Sweden in 1800s. The state wanted everyone to have surnames but many people were like ”why isn’t ’Sven from the farm’ enough?”
My swedish heritage has the surname change most generations-
Johns-son, anders-son, franz-son, etc.
@@chipw9513 Don't forget Thor Odin-son
And he might have ended up as Sven Farmer. That's how many peasant surnames came to be. John the Smith became John Smith. John who lives on the hill became John Hill.
Well it happened in Sweden in the 1800s because people started moving around then. But Sweden was never a feudal society and the Swedish court system was rigid and secure enough that land holdings under farmers never had any issue with a patronomic system.
Sven Anders-son and Amanda Hans-dottir.....
And then there's my ancestors, two brother called Samuel and Daniel who lived in the same tiny midlands town, probably on the same street if not in the same house, who both named one of their sons Joseph in the mid-1700s. And then both of those Josephs married a woman called Anne. In the same church.
In my family tree, two of the sons in one family were named John and Jonathan. Or what really gets me-- and this happened frequently-- if the child died young, they'd just re-use the name on the next kid. So much for believing in the soul....
That explains why it is easier to track your ancestry time after 1450-1500 😮❤
Surnames was only introduced in Thailand 110 years ago, and they all had to be unique to your family, so if you find someone with the same surname as you, you’re related, don’t date them
my last name is bullock and dates to the 1220s which is 120 yrs before the black plague.
I'm part tatar ( minuscule ethnic minority) in Romania, we're only a handful and all the people with my family name seem to stem from the same village. so your statement is super valid for my situation as well. XD
wait what? wdym lol ur saying everyone w my last name is related?
No shit same surname do not necessary related. These is a facebook group with people of the same surname as me in facebook about 600 members and we do not even know eachother
@@Kat-py4jkOnly applies to Thailand in this situation
When Native Americans had to report to various census takers, a lot of them were unfamiliar with the surname concept. So you get last names like “Sixkiller” or “Tenkiller” because buddies in line would try to one-up each other. Sometimes you’ll see surnames like “Brown” or “Chickadee” because it’s the first thing somebody thought of. You still see those surnames today.
My native ancestor wanted to be treated equally, so he chose “White”. No joke!
I know of an American with the surname "Nemerton" who is a descendant of Hungarian immigrants. When his ancestor disembarked in the early 1900s and got asked his name, he didn't understand English, so he answered "I don't understand" ("Nem értem").
@@praevasc4299 BEST😂
@@5roundsrapid263 😲
@lemonygirl84you dodged a bullet not marrying a buffalohead, was he ponca? lol😭
My surname, Mobley, is English. There's a small village in the midlands that apparently is the beginning of my family. ❤
Prior to written census records, surnames or nicknames were used to distinguish all the Toms, Dicks and Harrys from each other. One guildmaster in Bristol in the 1200s was John Redhead, John Carpenter, John Halfhand, or John Gray, depending on the year and the recording clerk.
I like the “son of” surnames. Like Jacobson, Williamson, Johnson, Thompson. And even better are the Fitz names because, if I remember right, somewhere down the line there was a “bastard” son of some upper echelon, usually nobility, so to distinguish the “cast off” from the “legitimate heir” they attached Fitz(which literally means Son Of) to the given name of the father and made it the child’s surname, hence Fitzwilliam, Fitzgerald, Fitzhubert, and whole bunch of other Fitzes in the world. One group wanted to establish a family name while the others wanted to distinguish which child would inherit.
Fitzroy
We have them in Spanish too.
González, Díaz, Fernández, Álvarez etc originally mean son of Gonzalo, Diego, Fernando, Álvaro and so on...
Did you know that the black death was caused by jews poisoning wells? jews also started ww1 and ww2, watch europa the last battle.
Did you know that the black death was caused by jews poisoning wells? jews also started ww1 and ww2, watch europa the last battle.
Wow, that is awesome information 🤙
And now your name is John Smith and you will no longer be confused with anybody else. 😂
E
I have met only one person pair with the same name surname combination
Like being a Fernandez or a Garcia in Spain.. 😂🤦🏽♀️
Yeah my partner has a fairly common first and last name and I tagged him in a Facebook post, well, I tried to. I tagged another person with the same name, but what was more awkward about tagging some random dude on a relationship post was it was a guy FROM THE CITY I LIVE IN. I had mutuals with him 😭
"Yes, but I'm John Hades-Womble Smith. HE'S John Cartwheel-Longbow Smith."
My last name is Parsons. I assume at some point in my family's distant past there was a minister or priest.
John, Ilbert's son, would become "John Ilbertson", I imagine?
If you were a blacksmith, you were John Smith. If you were a Mason, you were John Mason. A lot of last names were based on people's profession. Archer, Barber, Bowman, Brewer, Butler, Carpenter, Carver, Cook, Draper, Farmer, Fisher, Forester, Fowler, Gardener, Hunter, Mason, Miller, Piper, Potter, Sadler, Sheppard, Shoemaker, Skinner, Tanner, Taylor, Weaver, Wheeler, etc
So... I had a teacher who became a, "Hooker" 🤣🤣
hehehhehehe i’m a carpenter not rly it’s just tv and movies not real world carpentry
my last name is Glover. no problem figuring this one out. my ancestors were from England.
The students their profession is nothing so bum
"Why do i need to keep explaining this? My name is Potts, not Potter! I HAVE pots, I don't MAKE them!"
Chinese have long had surnames but they tend to identify more with a region.
Among the Chinese diaspora its common to ask someone with the same surname which region their family came from. And if it's a similar region they'd start delving into details down to the village level .
So for example a friend of mine had gone to school with a girl who had the same surname. They'd never got to comparing notes until years later but they started poking around and discovered that they were in fact cousins.
Yeah, the title specifies the English
Unlike Koreans who are all Kim’s
Can confirm as a Chinese. My surname Xi 郗is actually not that common in China as it’s usually found in the ShanXi province in northwestern China where it originated. Also peasants throughout the dynasties usually took surnames from emperors and nobility, so for example Li 李 and Zhao赵 are both common surnames found in China today that were two emperors’ surnames as well(from the Tang and Song dynasties)
Surnames in Greece came from the person's profession. It made sense, as sons took over family businesses and trades.
@@dennischi4598 lol my surname is 黄
This is definitely and England issue. Other countries had the family name tradition.
Back in the day when only two people made a village our names were me/you.
It was also used to identify where you came from if you did travel, or most surnames originated what job you did. For example: smith, miller, etc.
true, one of my teachers' last name is Butcher
Same with Cooper, Taylor, Baker, Potter, Carpenter and a host of other working class names. Amazing really
@@MyOnlyRiesen English is not my mother language and just NOW I googled the meaning of all these names you dropped. And my mind is blown 😂
@@MyOnlyRiesen i never knew carpenter was a last name
@@AnimateTheArts The Carpenters?
John Carpenter?
In Japan before 1868 surnames/family names were only for the samurai nobility and those in the imperial court, but His Majesty Emperor Meiji decreed that everyone must have a surname/family name. So people just started calling themselves whatever they wanted. Interestingly enough this lead to a lot of people having Satō as a surname
does it mean something?
Why?
Apparently Sato can mean either Village or Assistant Wisteria, Wisteria being a plant name
Can't be as bad as French Vietnam, which led pretty much everyone to get "Nguyen" as a surname at one point or another
@@sithknight7740 but think of all the punny Pho restaurant names we got in return.
In the small town he grew up in, he was known as Elvis the Pelvis. I always felt sorry for his brother, Enos.
Or his sister,Lucy?
Interesting enough quite by coincidence I'm sure. My surname means "weaver" and my hobby is crocheting. I don't know much about my ancestors but I can say for certain if they created their own surname because they were weavers and I myself enjoy fiber arts then I got it honestly 😊
In Scotland, there are common surnames like MacLeod, MacDonald, MacGregor, etc. The "Mac" means "son of". So, MacDougal means son of Dougal. However, many of the people with these surnames were not actually direct descendants of the clan chief but adopted the surname to denote that they belonged to that clan.
Yep. I got stuck with McMaster. Essentially Son of the Master. My married name? Not much better. Son of Gee.
MacBitch, Maccock etc.
Exactly the same happens in Greek. The ancient way of saying "son of" is IDES (Simonides etc.). The modern way is OPOULOS (ex. Spyropoulos, Papadopoulos = son of a priest), and the Turkish way that found its way with the 400-year occupation is OGLOU (ex. Hatzoglou, Sismanoglou etc.)
And of course there are all those Skandinavian names finishing in -SON or -SSON (which again means "son of").
.... MacAbitch
@irmar then you also have the middle eastern names that are basically the same but limited to the father and not usually passed down until recently like ben/bin [father's name].
In Korea it was similar, only rich nobles had last names. But at a certain point they ended up selling off the use of their last names to commoners. That's why there are often a lot of people with the same last name who aren't related in korea
Interesting…
Wow. Lee must be best selling name back then
Lee and Kim were fan favourites huh
@@noodloo3915 And don't forget "Park."
Thats because Korea is corrupt, my last name is a extremely rare because it didnt start in Korea and is basically one of the only "real" names. All these Kim Lee Park Suh and Joes have to have their origin attached to figure out who the real lineages are and even then they most likely bought the books to hide their identities
I really appreciate your channel and all the information you share!! Lots of love to you!!
USA: California: We just had sewing in our tin!! 🤣🤣
I thought she was gonna say we started using surnames to identify the bodies💀
bruh
bruh 💀
Same o.o
Me too
Exactly what I was thinking
"Back in my day we only had one name, kids these days have two"
😀🖖💕
W post 90s
It's a slippery slope! First they wanna have two names, then they'll have four, and soon enough we'll end up with 400 names in a single person which GOES AGAINST GOD AND NATURE!
Back in my day we only had 2 names, now these spoiled kids have 3!
I have five names haha😅
Shoutout to the Celts, Scands and Africans
I didn’t realize how many cultures had clan names before England, I only knew of Ireland
This probably only applies to England 😅 It's not like that in other parts of the world. Surnames were a thing in many ancient civilisations.
In Arab tradition, you usually have your fathers name as a last name. So if your dad is named Ahmed and your name is Mehdi, you’ll be Mehdi Ibn Ahmed. Ibn meaning son of, however when colonisation happened, we switched to the surnames system. In my family for instance, my dad is the first generation to bear a proper last name.
I noticed that "Al" is usually in front of a lot of Arabic names. Does it mean anything like "Ibn?"
@@arielrose6361 Al means "the"
When you use your father's name, it's called a "patronym"
We do that here(and still do)(malaysia)
But its a bit different, we use bin for males(means son of) and binti for females (means daughter of). Also, im not sure if its only apply to indians but they use a/l(anak lelaki ; son of) or a/p(anak perempuan; daughter of )
For example : adam bin idris, prishya a/p rohan
People's names here are kinda long compared to english people
I think that take is a bit oversimplified. Arabs have always kept track of lineage. Yes we are named after our father but we are also supposed to know our forefather. Because of this we have a bunch of "middle names" which consists of forefather's names as far back as we can go (hundreds of years back). Then when it comes to tribes and history there are whole professions of ancestry recorders on that subject, but each tribe knows their origins going back hundreds to thousands of years back. This is a cultural thing and potentially a reason why Arabian horses (or animals in general) are so sought after since they are pure bred and have their lineage tracked.
In the Philippines we had Spanish surnames given to us just so our colonizers can distinguish us with recognizable names. And in my local island, depending on the name of your town you'll get a surname whose first letter matches that of the town. This was to make census easier on the colonizing government to arrange which people to which town. Later on the country was sold to America and to appeal to the new rulers the weathy and middle class locals named their children American and English names. This is why if you meet a Filipino you would often find them having an English first name and a Spanish last name like "John Michael Gonzales" .
Hi, this is Pinoy Restaurant, Jennifer Lopez speaking. How can I make your day better?
@@l4d1k06 I honestly thought Jennifer Lopez was Filipino for a while lmao. But then I realized some second to third generation latin immigrants also followed similar naming convention.
Good
So America is in possession of stolen property?
Actually, it was forced onto people for census reasons
"Alrighty now. Let everyone have a surname based on their labor."
Everyone: Shoemaker, Smith, Bowman, Farmer, Hunter, Skinner... and then there's Moderfoker.
This is the first video I’ve ever seen of your channel and I absolutely love it! Instant subscribe 🤔😊🤩🙌
Now this is the kind of shorts I wish I came across more often something informative that doesn't waste 45 seconds of my life
If my history teacher taught like this and sounded like this, I’d pay a lot more attention.
It's so true. Education has to catch up with technologies potential. I can imagine Ted Talk quality presentations should be the norm with classroom teachers acting more like TA's
@MR Blaze Pukka I was just talking about their accent
The important lesson is nothing ever changes until lots of normal poor folks die
Lucky to have a history teacher who doesn’t just read the text book but tells hypothetical stories that are actually quite interesting 😭 asks a lot of what ifs makes it a very interactive class
like a crazy person?
The historian Barbara Tuchman (in her DISTANT MIRROR book) asserts that this was also the period where unionzed workers began. Kings refused to let families flee the King's city (full of disease and death) because the King lost craftsmen and workers. Well, they still left and then negotiated - "You want tus to stay, then we're banding together and need uniform protections."
Jewish people, worldwide, have ancient surnames.
They came from the father and from which tribe the father belonged.
When you see a name like David Ben Gurion, “Ben” means son of. His full name, which isn’t used in common day-to-day, would include his tribe.
My name is:
Ziona Bas Aharon ha Kohen.
Ziona- my Hebrew first name.
Bas or Bat- daughter of
Aharon- my father’s first name
Ha Kohen- the tribe of the high priest.
One of the oldest surnames on earth is Kohen/ Cohen/ Kohn/ Cohane, etc.
This name is from Aaron (Hebrew Aharon, like my father,) who was Moses’ brother.
We trace our lineage back that far.
Jesus was Yeshua Ben Yoseph Ha Levi, or the tribe of Levite.
That said, what you taught is brilliant. Thanks!
It's why names from place names are rarely the big cities. When people _went_ to cities, they needed to differentiate themselves by referring to the small places they came from. There are far more people called Tipperton than London.
Oh that actually explains things!!
Excellent point! Good observation.
The reason we have Surnames here in Sweden was because they started to document where everyone lived.
And they realised alot of people just didnt have surnames but had the same name.
Usualy a person would be named "David" and then where they where from or lived. For example "David from Hult"
So the state said that they had to give themselves surnames.
And that is why we have god tier surnames like "Hammarsköld" (Hammer-Shield) or "Hård" (Hard)
That lead to people being called
Sten Hård (Rock Hard) for example.
Sounds metal. As expected from Sweden
Interesting! And I laughed at "Hård" (Hard)
Imagine having the surname rock hard 💀
Jag trodde Hård var ett soldatnamn? Och att de namn som vanliga bybor gav sig själva var typ Lindquist/Dahlberg/Björklund/etc
@@dorrolorro
Efternamn kom efter vad man gjorde eller vart man bodde under medeltiden, fast det var mer för att folk kan ha haft samma förnamn.
Som till exempel.
Jag heter Daniel, om det fans en till Daniel i byn skulle det kanske kalla mig Daniel Smed, för det var det jag gjorde.
Eller kanske ett namn för att jag bor brevid skogen. Så Daniel Skog.
Under sent 1800 tal till 1901 var det faststält i lag at man ska ha ett efternamn.
Då blev alla Johansson, Eriksson, osv.
Namn som Lindquist är namn som har sats ihop. Att linda och Kvist. Kan vara så att personerna som hade detta namn när det blev lag, gillade att linda kvistar med varandra, eller gjorde korgar av just kvistar.
Dang, the Black Death raised economic prospects for those who survived.
Yes, it really did-- for those who had been dirt poor serfs before the catastrophe. The rich suddenly began to have difficulty finding "good help", and had to pay far more for that help, so their own prospects were presumably diminished. The law of supply and demand inched English society just a bit closer to equity. Serfs-- slaves, after all-- became working class people with the ability to make their own choices.
I figured it was a lot more dark, like naming the graves of plague ridden corpses 😂