On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 09:00:29 GMT, "aq" <[email protected]> wrote: >Hi, anyone information about the family Hantson ? Usually I don't reply to anonymous posters, but I'm feeling kind today. The surname is a (probably anglicized) variation on "Hansen" or "Hansson", which literally means "son of Hans". The custom of patronyms changed to real family names around 1900 here in Norway, and a little earlier in Sweden and Denmark. In Iceland, they still use patronyms. I did a search on the Norwegian Statistics Central Agency pages <url:http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/00/navn_en/> for the surname "Hantson" and didn't find any. However, a search for "Hansen" returned a whopping "There are 59833 with Hansen as last name." You'll find similar results for Denmark and Sweden, as it is one of the commonest surnames of the entire Scandinavia. So common that, in fact, a lot of Hansens have changed their names to something else during the last fifty years. Thus, I think that you should refine your query a bit. regards, -- Leif Biberg Kristensen http://solumslekt.org/ mail to leif at solumslekt dot org

Leif B. Kristensen <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>... > On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 09:00:29 GMT, "aq" <[email protected]> wrote: > The surname is a (probably anglicized) variation on "Hansen" or > "Hansson", which literally means "son of Hans". The custom of patronyms > changed to real family names around 1900 here in Norway, and a little > earlier in Sweden and Denmark. In Iceland, they still use patronyms. As a side note, "Hansson" is somewhat special in Iceland, as it was (in the 19th century in particular) sometimes used when the father was just not known. ("Hansson" is pronounced like "Hans son", which means "His son"), so it does not necessarily mean the father was named Hans. Tha names "Gestsson" and "Hermannsson" have also been used for the same purpose.