Seeking some advice on people's names?

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mohsart
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Joined: 25 Feb 2020
Age: 56
Gender: Male
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Location: Southern Sweden

28 Mar 2022, 2:18 pm

Some things about surnames. The following is true for Swedish, and I expect mostly for other Germanic languages. Perhaps not true for other European language groups.

In the old days it was common for a surname to be the word for the trade the person had.
IE John Smith where Smith means metal worker. John Weaver where Weaver means someone who weaves, makes cloth.
Soldiers often got surnames given to them. In Swedish we have Rask (Alert, quick), Frisk (Healthy) to name a few.
Patronomicon, where one gets a surname based on the fathers name was also common, particularly in the Nordic countries. IE Andersson which means the son of Anders, Svensson which means the son of Sven.
This is still practiced in Iceland, I believe, where also the females don't get a son surname, but would be named Andersdottir (daughter of Anders) etc.
The nobility had special names that were/are "trademarked" (you cannot use them if not related to someone with the name). Sometimes the names are just words, Ramel, Bagge; and sometimes they are telling where the person was from like my ancestor Tomas Eriksson who got the surname von Rajalin since he was from the Finnish town/village Rajalin; and sometimes they got fancy looking names like Lagerkrantz (Bay Leave Crown, I guess?).
The common people liked the idea of fancy names so they took surnames that somewhat resembled those, like Bergsåker (Mountain Field), Bergström (Mountain Stream), or Sjöblom (Lake Flower).
Most often, especially earlier in history, when females got married they took on their husbands surname.
Also, if you don't know already, we always write our names First/given name followed by the surname, ie the oposite of how it's done in China.

/Mats


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