Last Names

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by MikeVic

I was told to post this:

http://www.ancestry.com/facts/homan-family-history.ashx

That's the answer I was going to post. Nice job.

[Autumn]

Two things to remember too about surnames when they began is that people tended to follow in their family's footsteps. So a family of smiths would tend to continue being smiths for generation on generation. So, it made sense for all the kids to be Smith just like their dad.

But also I think in the beginning surnames were more individual. It wasn't assumed everyone would have the same surname in a family until later on when it became kind of routine. It was just a way to describe someone, like you might say, "You know, John from Philadelphia STreet, not John the Baker."

[Neon_Chaos]

I'm half-Chinese (my father is pureblood), and my last name is one of the more common ones. I have my roman-catholic name, and I also have my Chinese ancestral name, which would be written as: 陳新力

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by Autumn

Two things to remember too about surnames when they began is that people tended to follow in their family's footsteps. So a family of smiths would tend to continue being smiths for generation on generation. So, it made sense for all the kids to be Smith just like their dad.

But also I think in the beginning surnames were more individual. It wasn't assumed everyone would have the same surname in a family until later on when it became kind of routine. It was just a way to describe someone, like you might say, "You know, John from Philadelphia STreet, not John the Baker."

My "real" last name is Smith, however I do not recall the last actual smith in my family. It makes me wonder who the first and last smith was, and what they smithed in their smithing business of smiths.

[Scoobz0202]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

That's the answer I was going to post. Nice job.

Originally Posted by MikeVic

I was told to post this:

homan Family History Facts 1920 - Ancestry.com

Dayum. I knew there were a lot of Homan's around where I live, but didn't realize it was that spread out.

One of these days I want to get to the bottom of the family history.

[Lorena]

My ancestors must have done something really naughty because my maiden last name means "to stain, dishonor".

[bhlloy]

Lloyd is an anglicization of the Welsh llwyd, which means grey. Which in my case is pretty fricking appropriate.

I also just found out that my namesake won a medal of honor in the American Civil War. Thanks Wikipedia!

[Wolfpack]

My last name is so rare, if you Google'd it, you'd most likely find me or one of my immediate family (most likely my brother, who got his name on a patent as part of a team at his work some number of years ago). I think there are some stray references in Europe nowadays, which is more than there used to be. As far as America goes, we're pretty much it, though. Makes for something of a challenge to trace genealogy much further back than a few generations when my great-grandfather came to America and eventually settled in Illinois.

Contrast this with my wife who has a number of VIPs dangling from various branches of her tree and can claim direct lineage to a Rebecca Rolfe who was born in Virginia many years ago....

[Buccaneer]

This was one of the sidebars in the family history book I wrote:

The surname of “Clark” came from an occupational name for a scribe or secretary, originally a member of a minor religious order who undertook such duties. The word clerc denoted a member of a religious order, from Old English cler(e)c ‘priest’, reinforced by Old French clerc. Both are from Late Latin clericus, from Greek klerikos, a derivative of kleros ‘inheritance’, ‘legacy’. In medieval Christian Europe, clergy in minor orders were permitted to marry and so found families; thus the surname could become established. In the Middle Ages it was virtually only members of religious orders who learned to read and write, so that the term clerk came to denote any literate man.

This, however, doesn’t mean that our Clark ancestors were members of the clergy, or that they all knew how to read and write. Sometime way back in England or Ireland (after the Norman Invasion), there was a person named Gilbert de Clerc (or someone like that) and consequently, his descendants kept the surname ‘de Clerc’ which eventually was shortened to Clerc or Clerk, then Clarke.

The ‘e’ at the end of Clarke was common in medieval England and Ireland but like many words in the English language, the name without the ‘e’ eventually became more popular, especially in America. In our family genealogy, the transition from Clarke to Clark occurred after our Rhode Island ancestors migrated to Central New York.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Antmeister

I am assuming my ancestor's owners had to deal with money with a last name of Marks.

Nah, they were just wrestling fans

[Groundhog]

Haynes from my father's side is a Scottish surname that referred to a location (a bend in a river, or something similar), so it probably originated as a sort of clan or village marker (I am John from Haynes).

[stevew]

My peeps must have tossed a mean salad if it was named after them.

[Greyroofoo]

I just know that my surname came from people that couldn't spell their surname.