What is a surname? The anatomy of a family name
How family names began, the four ways most were formed, and what that means for reading your own.
A surname is the part of a person's name that is shared across a family and passed down. In much of Europe that habit is only about a thousand years old, and in some places it is far younger. Before it, one name was enough for most people, and when two neighbours shared it, a second label was added to tell them apart: John the baker, John by the mill, John, Peter's son. Once those labels began to be inherited, they became surnames.
The four common ways a name was made
From a father or mother. Patronymics and matronymics say whose child you are. English Johnson, Welsh Evans (son of Evan), Irish O'Brien (descendant of Brian), Scottish MacDonald, Spanish Fernandez and Russian Petrov all work this way.
From a place. Some names point to a village, hill or house: Hill, Wood, Brooks, German Berg, French Dupont. Others name a person's origin, such as French or Scott, which usually marked someone who had moved away from that country or people.
From a trade or office. Smith, Miller, Taylor, German Schneider (tailor) and Müller, Italian Ferrari (smiths) record what an ancestor did, or what a lord's household needed him to do.
From a nickname. Short, Brown, Armstrong and Merriman began as descriptions of a person's looks or manner. The original joke or meaning is often lost, which is why nickname surnames are among the hardest to explain with confidence.
Fixed names came late and unevenly
England saw hereditary surnames spread from the 12th century onward, and by the 14th century most families had one. Spain and France moved in similar ways; Scandinavian patronymics stayed fluid in many places until the 19th century; Iceland still uses them. In several countries surnames were made compulsory by law, often so that tax and military records could be kept: parts of the German lands and the Austrian Empire in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and Turkey in 1934.
What happens to a name over time
Names change with the languages and the records around them. Clerks spelt by ear, families emigrated and simplified, and some names were translated: a German Schmidt can become an American Smith. Most spellings were not standardised until literacy and paperwork required it. See our guide on spellings of surnames.
Using this to read your own name
Start with the language the name looks like, then ask which of the four types fits. Treat the first answer as a hypothesis. One spelling can have several unrelated sources, and a name that looks English may be an anglicised version of something else. Look your name up in the name index to see its origin and variants, then check a published dictionary.