Surname Saturday

Most people know what a surname is - it's your family name or your last name.  But when  you are researching genealogy a surname is so important, but the farther you go back in your tree, you may find a few twists and turns.

First when you are starting your search, and you hit a road block, it could be your surname changed - sometimes for no reason.  Now of course, when  a female name changes, it usually indicates that she got married. When a male's last name changes, well, it can cause a lot of problems.  A good example is my maiden name was Altonen.  Naturally you would research Altonen right? Well, I wasn't finding anything.  I did't find anything because when my Great grandfather Niilo came to America from Finland, he actually picked a different last name. How this happened, we don't know.  Why? that's a mystery. There is a lot of mystery about him when he came to America, but that is for another blog as well.  But turned out his name was Kaappola, and he changed it when he crossed the border in Canada.  Finding this out, got me started.

You will find when you are researching a person, a good thing to do is scan through pages of census records when you find one person, because it is possible you'll see that surname again because a lot of families lived close to each other.  Farms next to family farms as well.  Remember when checking on surnames in census records to watch the spelling. It is only spelled right if the person taking the information wrote it correctly or the person translating it could read the writing.

Surnames can take on many spellings by the immigrants choice as well.   Especially when someone comes to America they may change the spelling to just sound a little different. A lot of German immigrants did this.  You will find not only did they change the way their last name was spelled, but they may chose a different first name all together, just to sound more "American" or frankly just easier for people to say in English.

When you start researching outside the United States, surnames could be in a different form. Example in Finland, it wasn't so much your fathers name you were given, but the name of the farm you lived on.  This is popular in Europe and Scotland too. You can be given the farm or castle name.   Some surnames in Europe in early century's actually had descriptions in the name.  Whitebeard, Snake eye, Longfellow, Longshank, The Brave, The Young, etc.  In some countries the surname was given by the area they lived in like Woodman, Knolls, Hill, etc.    Others took names based on occupations, like Cook, Baker, Fiddler, Leech, etc.

Surnames started in early 1000, but by 1400 they became more popular.   In some cultures, the surname actually will be listed first.  Sometimes, the names can change order after baptism as well.  In many countries the name could take on the fathers first name in their last name.  Like Ivarsson, means he was the son of Ivars.  Ivarsdatter means she was the daughter of Ivars.  When you go researching into other countries, be sure to read up on how names were derived because it can save you a lot of time! Depending on the time period, you may not even have surnames, you may just have first names with a description of the person.  Maybe that's why Oprah is Oprah?!!

The thing to take away from this is a name is not aways the name.  There are always different ways to spell it, and when you find a name, there could be clues within that name.  Either a town name, fathers name, occupation, or description of that person.

When you research, a good thing to do as well, is go with the person who has an unusual first name as well, because if you can find them, it will lead to the more common names.  Example: John Vincent verses Theophilus Vincent.  There will be a million John's but maybe a handful of Theophilus.

The definition of surname is: 1-The name that a person has in common with family members, as distinguised from a Christian name or given name. 2- A name added to a person's name, as one indicating a circumstance of birth to; call by a surname.

So, What's in a name?  When I start talking about individuals, you will later be able to see these clues in their names.