"Every surname is a story in itself. It may tell you where your forebears originated, what their work was, or their social status. It may even tell you the color of their hair or complexion, if they were bald, or had bandy legs, or were thin or tall, short or fat . . ." What's in a Name?" http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/lesson2.htm After a few years of genealogy tracing my last name across continents and oceans, I stepped back and asked: Where do these surnames come from? What is this convention all about and how long has it been going on? I did some reading -- actually a lot of reading -- and found, as one author put it, there's "nothing of a permanent or exclusive nature about surnames." ORIGINS: The Chinese were the first using family names 4,700 years ago. (One source says all Chinese surnames were decreed chosen from a sacred poem.) Hereditary surnames came to Europe just 1,000 years ago in Venice, followed by the Irish, French, English, and then other Europeans. Surnames were widespread by 1500, but only common in some Middle Eastern and African areas as late as the 1900s. A few groups do not use surnames including Tibetans, Javanese, and many royal families. TYPES: A surname is a name shared to identify members of a family; appears in varied order with other names depending on the culture, most often passes down from the father and falls into four categories: --Kinship surnames come from the father, mother, or clan name with or without an affix. Elton John has a patronymic kinship surname and, presumably, an ancestral father named John. Leif Ericson had the classic "son of" affix. Other "son of" surnames are: Gonzalez and Rodrigues, Jones, Edwards, Peeters, Bertucci, Janowicz, Popescu, Ivanovich, Jozefski, and ben Isaac. They sometimes derive from the mother or indicate a female child as Addison (son of Addie) and Karlsdotter. A Hispanic married woman's name such as Victoria de la Garza Diaz Alvarez includes surnames from first her mother, then father, then her husband. It looks straightforward, but relationship is not always clear. The Celtic affixes O, Fitz, Mc, and Mac mean "son of" although also taken by clan members not related by blood. --Place names were fashionable, giving us Hill, Brooks, Eastwood, Thorpe and Blair (village and field), Neuville (new town), Berliner, Parris, Schoenberg (beautiful hill), plus Lahn and Zhang (rivers in Germany and China). --Occupation surnames were often chosen in Medieval times. Examples are Miller and Smith, the German equivalents -- Muller and Schmidt -- Clerk (and variation Clark), Taylor, Cooper and Butnaru (barrelmaker), Guerro (warrior), Okoro (prince), and, of course, Butcher, Baker, and Fenstermacher (window maker). --Descriptive names set apart the many village Johns or Juans until now we have Armstrong, Longfellow, Goodman, Fairchild, Devout, Lloyd (gray), Blanchett (white or blonde), Bialy and Wielgu (pale one and big one), also Patnaik (literature authority). Other common surnames were chosen from precious metals, jewels, plants, flowers, seasons and weather. Gold and Kim (Korean for gold), DeSilva, Pearl, Bush, Reed, Spring, and Frost are instances. MYTHS and CHANGES: Surnames have their mysteries, pitfalls, and mistaken beliefs. It is untrue that surnames were often changed at Ellis Island, but some immigrants changed their surname years later during the legal naturalization process. Many more people changed their names to smooth assimilation, for perceived business and social ease, to simplify spelling or pronunciation, and to distinguish themselves from neighbors or relatives with the same or similar name. People take new names in homage or as creative expression (in the U.S. every letter of the alphabet has been chosen as somebody's one-letter surname). It is untrue that most of the four million African Americans who adopted surnames after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 chose their former slaveowners' surnames. On one plantation, owned by a man named Jones, only one freed slave chose that name. The others, whatever their individual reasons, took the names of Brown, Jackson, Quinton, Nellicliff, Thompson, Wallace, Marshall, Howard, Verdier, Golphine, Ash, Yeomans, Baker, Goodwin, and Pinckney. In choosing their surnames they tended to be conservative and adopted family names held by many whites. It is untrue that spelling counts. Even a hundred years ago, one branch of the family might write Kelly and another Kelley, while an offspring signs Keeley. Lanes, Lahns, and Longs may be all descended from one man. Lastly, Smith is not the most common surname on earth. Almost 30 Chinese named Chang (also spelled Zhang) walk about for every single Smith. In spite of the surname's relative youth in Western cultures and queer modulations, it is a fascinating label and a valuable clue in the quest to learn from where we came. ---------------------------------------------------------------- REPRINTS. Permission to reprint articles from RootsWeb Review is granted unless specifically stated otherwise, provided: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article: Previously published in RootsWeb Review: 27 April 2005, Vol. 8, No. 17.