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Likewise there are several patronymic surnames from the Welsh “ap <father’s name> (son of) that have ended up as new surnames retained the “ap” in several cases, mainly in reduced form at the start of the surname, as in Upjohn (from ap John), Powell (from ap Hywel), Price (from ap Rhys), Pritchard (from ap Richard), and Bowen (from ab Owen).
My surename is Svensson, literally "Sven's son". But patronymic surnames aren't used in Sweden/Norway anymore, so at some point we just got stuck with whatever father was the last in line, a bit weird. Maybe I should try to figure out which Sven it was.
I guess the tradition of it being the man's name passed on means that's why there is no common surnames with *dottir as it is with *son? (Not sure what the english version for a daughter is).
Had some Icelandic friends in school (which still has patronymic names, moved here after they were born), and it was for them somewhat problematic at times that the siblings had different surnames (Björnsdottir and Björnsson), as people don't assume they're family, and especially not that the parents both had different surnames again. Like school pickup with a teacher not knowing the situation.
> Pritchard (from ap Richard)
Also: Pratchett
"The name Pratchett was a Welsh patronymic surname created from the personal name Richard."
> as in Upjohn (from ap John)
Having never heard this name before, I definitely would have to resist the urge to make an updog-style joke if I met something named this.
My surname is an example of this! Pugh comes from ap Hugh (though more commonly spelt in Welsh these days as Huw)
Tangentially, the way the leading "a" seems to fall off makes me think of Rebracketing [0].
Ex: "I found an ewt in the pocket a napron" --> "I found a newt in the pocket of an apron."
Don't forget the infamous ap Doc.
Oh nice! Does Upton follows the same pattern?
This one is fascinating, and something i'd never heard of before
I came here to say exactly this. Delighted that it’s the top comment (or at least it was when I saw it!). Other examples are Parry (ap Harri), and Pugh (ap Huw)
I wonder if there are similar examples from our Celtic cousins? e.g. from Mac or Mc in Scotland, or the O’… in Ireland?
Harris and Harrison are other examples of this kind of surname.
In Dublin, the bus routes are bilingual and a couple of years ago I noticed that the Irish translation of Harristown is Baile Anraí¹. When I first saw “Baile Anraí” as the destination for a passing bus, I wondered where Henry’s Town might be. I then figured that Henry and Harris must be variations of the same name and that Anraí is the Irish version of both names.
Sure enough, when I check this now, Wikipedia concurs². The article it cites states that Harry is the “Medieval English form of Henry. In modern times it is used as a diminutive of both Henry and names beginning with Har.”³
The surname Hanks may also derive from the use of Hank as a diminutive of Henry⁴
¹ https://www.dublinbus.ie/getmedia/947fdcee-5f28-46e0-8785-ab...
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_(given_name)
Another one to add is that Japanese boys names often end -rō (-郎, "nth son")... including the very plainly named 一郎 (Ichirō, "first son"), 二郎 (Jirō, "second son"), 三郎 (Saburō, "third son"), 四郎 (Shirō "fourth son"), 五郎 (Gorō, "fifth son"), 六郎 (Rokurō, "sixth son"), 七郎 (Shichirō "seventh son"), 八郎 (Hachirō, "eighth son") and 九郎 (Kurō, "ninth son")
One other thing that has disappeared from common use(although I have seen it done among some "higher" circles still) is using the husband's full name for the wife here in the UK.
So if you have a man called "John Bridgerton", his wife would be referred to in certain circumstances as "Mrs John Bidgerton". Like you'd get an invite to the King's Ball, and it would say:
"Hereby inviting: Mr John Bridgerton and Mrs John Bridgerton"
Here's an exception to these general rules (first names appearing in surnames) is Peterman: you'd think it was some kind of relation to a relative named peter, but it is actually a name for a profession. A Peterman was someone tasked with finding deposits of saltpeter for the production of fertlizer and gunpower.
A partial documentation is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltpetre_works
A better narrative of this industry is in Ed Conway's book "Material World" https://edconway.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-material-worl...
A few more I haven't seen mentioned yet:
* "Dob" is another old nickname for "Robert", giving us "Dobson";
* "Dodge" another nickname for Roger, hence Dodgson, as in Louis Carrol's real name, Charles Dodgson;
* "Tibb" is an old nickname for Theobald, giving surnames like "Tibbs" and "Tibbets";
* "Hud" for "Hugh", giving us the Hudsons.
I didn’t know English had a diminutive suffix (-kin). Is it used still in common English?
We have it Portuguese (-inho/-inha) and I find them so useful. It always seemed a missing feature of English.
Also, is there an augmentative suffix as well that I don’t know about?
In Farsi / Persian we have "-zadeh" which means child of (born from). Last names were not instituted in Persia / Iran until early 1900s and everyone got to pick their own, so there are a lot of *zadehs as it was an easy choice. So eg Hassanzadeh is child of Hassan
I imagine many ~son names are Scandinavian imports. Scandinavian surnames, until quite recently, were formed from the (usually) paternal forename. Iceland still continues this tradition to this day, e.g. Björk Guðmundsdóttir (daughter of Guðmundur).
You see this in Spanish a lot too. Diaz is son of Diego, which is still a common enough name. But there seem to be many more examples where the corresponding name is now rather uncommon from what I can tell. I am thinking of examples such as Menendez, Ortiz, Juarez, and Ordonez.
I had a friend who's last name was Hodgeson. Until this article I'd never really considered that that it meant "son of Hodge". "Hodge" turns out to be a medieval English nickname for "Roger": https://nameberry.com/b/boy-baby-name-hodge
"Fitz" is another patronymic: Fitzsimmons, Fitzgerald, Fitzpatrick, Fitzsimmons, etc.
There’s an English cricketer called Ben Duckett. His nickname among Australian fans when playing for their local team appears to be “Autocorrect”
Autocorrectson sounds like a fine family name.
In England it’d be “Duckyson”
I wonder if there are real examples of more creative nicknames becoming surnames.
When I was in school in England the most common first names for boys are exactly the first names that were given in the article namely John, Peter, James and Williams. The first three are from the Bible names and the last one is not from the Bible but from the name of Williams the Conquerer or Guillaume in French. The other most popular ones are Andrew, Philip, Matthew and Thomas. Fun facts, most of English people have middle names but it always abbreviated (e.g John F. Peterson) and apparently it's considered very rude to call someone by their middle name.
Later I've found that the typical English popular first names are mostly from the Bible, or to be exact the disciples of Jesus. In the Quran however, the names of Jesus disciples are not given but just called as Ḥawāriyyūn or the helpers/disciples. Similarly the names for friends or sahabat of Muhammad are not provided in the Quran. The ones that went to established the Rashidun Caliphates are very popular among Muslim for examples Omar/Umar, Osman/Usman and Ali. These three names are equivalent to the top three given in the article namely John, Peter and James.
Along these lines, 'Mc' and 'Mac' mean 'son of' in Scottish and Irish surnames.
In a similar vein: the origin of nicknames Junior, Chip, Trip, and Skip:
When the father and the son carry the same first name, the son can be nicknamed Junior (this is commonly known). But he can also be said to be "a chip off the old block" or "Chip" for short. When the grandfather, father, and son all have the same first name, then the grandson is the third (or triple) of the same name - ergo "Trip".
What about Skip? When the grandfather and the son have the same name, but the father is the odd one out. The grandson is now "Skip" with the name having "skipped" a generation before making a return.
Speaking of nicknames, "nickname" was "an eke name" (an additional name) so people thought it was "a nickname", similar to how "a napron" became "an apron". That is, it's one of the words that was "a n-" but the n moved because it sounds like "an -"
The surnames with the suffix -enko are the most known and common Ukrainian surnames. Where "en" is roughly son-of or a child-of equivalent in English, and the "ko" means a smaller, baby version. For example Kovalenko where "Koval" means blacksmith, Petrenko where Petre or Petro if from a biblical name Peter.
Adam => Ad => Adkin/Atkin => Atkins/Atkinson
It had somehow never occurred to me before reading this that Dixon = Dickson and Nixon = Nickson.
Reminds me of a great translation I struggled a bit at first. Gimli from Lord of the Rings is named in English: Gimli, son of Glóin. In the German translation his name is Gimli Glóinssohn. So back to English it would be Gimli Glóinson
My last name - Beattie - is also in the "Bartholomew" nickname group along with Bates/Bateson.
Bartholomew means "son of Ptolemy", so the name is sort of "Ptolemy's son Bart's kid".
(Fun fact: Just to drive the Brits crazy, many families in the U.S with that surname (including mine) pronounce it "bee-AT-tee" instead of "bee-tee". God knows why. Maybe it's an attempt to get people to spell it correctly.)
In arabic we have (bin or ibn) which means son of, and (abu) which means father of.
This was so cool to read. I often think in English names are black boxes that doesn’t have deeper meaning (unlike Chinese where names often have literal meaning), so the insight here was great. And in hindsight mostly obvious, but I had never thought of them that way before. Nice find!
Can someone explain patronymic names to me as someone from a different culture?
So you name your son with your given name + son, right?
But doesn't it mean he no longer shared the same surname with you? How does it make sense?
(Edit: I'm aware it was a practice long time ago, but still.)
Wholesome read. I didn't know that Robin comes from Robertson. So Robinson is Robertgrandson.
Another interesting one: Dawson is David's son.
I have a friend whose son is named Dawson and the father is David. When naming my own kid, I was curious of the origin of Dawson and finally put two and two together. Apparently it was intentional!
Baxter is the female version of Baker i.e. a female baker (person who bakes for a living).
Another “son” that comes in is when put in a prefix. McDonald is son of Donald (i think this is Irish). In semitic languages, the prefix added is Ben like Benjamin means Son of Jamin. In italian, they add O’Donald (i think) for “of Donald”.
It has been written that the s suffix was also used by people that had a “master” and they would adopt their masters surname, trade or first name with the suffix. For example the worked for the Smith, they would become Smiths.
Trouble is I can’t remember where I read it, but I also recall at least two people that were heavily into genealogy telling me the same. It might have been
https://www.routledge.com/A-History-of-British-Surnames/Mcki...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobkin
IRC, one of the Strugatskys used this REnicked name on his brother
I’ve always been fascinated by how people of generations have gotten their names, it’s usually a good story if you can trace it back enough..
I always found it uncomfortable how in the US (more so than other places) you could just change your name with a fee and a piece of paper. That said a lot of my family who emigrated had their names changed in the immigration office while moving to America, at the same time that has become an extension of ours..
If my nickname was a surname, we probably wouldn’t be allowed a passport
The guy has his blog going since 94. What a legend!
There're also cases when a nickname stems from the full name which no one has anymore.
In Kievan Rus, the common form of Vladimir was Volodimir. Ukraine still has this form (Volodymyr Zelensky).
The diminutive of Volodimir was Vova, which makes sense. Later, in Russia, Volodimir was replaced with the Church Slavonic form, Vladimir.
So today diminutive of Vladimir is Vova (not Vlad, a common mistake in the West to call Putin Vlad).
The R->H nicknames are interesting considering the northern French "r" sounds like the aspirated "h" in English. Many French would pronounce Robert as approximately "ho-beh(r)". I wonder if this is a place where idiosyncratic spelling captured differences in pronunciation of the name, but the common given name never changed its spelling.
My Norwegian ancestors arrived in the US as Nordhus surname, and left immigration with a completely unrelated -son surname. That happened a lot and I understand it's because they didn't speak English and the immigration officers had busy lines to process so they used a default name of sorts on the paperwork.
Interesting, never occurred to me so many English names are constructed in this way. In Ireland we have O' (e.g. O'Brien) that means 'descendent of' and Mac/Mc that means 'son of'. Also the female equivalents Nic and Ni (less common).
Lawrence => Law => Lawson
> We get Hodge / Hodges / Hodgson / Hodgkins from "Hodge", an arcahic nickname for Roger.
I wonder if the Brazil Rogers - which are pronounced Hodger - are related to this older version of the name.
Some cultures had (have?) a tradition of naming each successive generation according to the next line in a poem or song.
If you ran out of verses, you'd pick a new song to start over.