OzTennis

Yep, John Sergeant, John Major ...

mikelincs

Mine is No 5.

old.sparkles

probably

For my surname, there are 6 towns (and more where my surname forms part of the town name), a castle, a canal, a hill and more. They're not all in the same geographical area either

Buzzy--Bee

My MIL's neighbour was Carol Jones. Then she married Sid Singer. Nobody realised anything was amusing until yours truly pointed it out.......

Gordon Barlow

Certainly that's the traditional belief. But what has always bothered me is the apparent absence of a decree from a central government mandating the immediate adoption of surnames. (Except very much later, relating to Jews in Germany - and no doubt in other places and to other communities without permanent surnames.) If Will the son of Jack became Will Jackson, why didn't Will's son Fred become Fred Willson? If Charlie-who-lived-in-a-wood became Charlie Wood, why did Charlie's son Mike who lived in the town remain Mike Wood?

Puzzling!

mulben

Scottish / Irish , but we always took " son " is derived from Saxon / Teutonic / Scandinavian origin.
Where as " Fitz " seems to fall under 7.
Meself was quite amused to have a Fitz in direct lineage , parents not so amused !

OzTennis

Interesting question. I would think without researching it that at some point in the dim and distant past they started a register of births, deaths and marriages in England and the custom (perhaps rule) grew up that when a child was born it was registered with it's father's surname and it's own christain name so the original say Jackson would spawn a line of Jacksons and not Jimson, Fredson, Brianson etc.

In countries such as Russia, Czech Republic etc, if a man has a daughter they put OVA on the end so Zverev's daughter has a surname of Zverevova; Navratil's daughter is Navratilova. This is the custom in these countries.

Bermudashorts

There are a couple of theories about my married name, one theory would make it 1) and the other theory would make it 4).

My maiden name is not English.

Gordon Barlow

It's the permanence of surnames that requires some explanation, and I don't see how that could have come about without a very strongly enforced decree from the central government - that is, the king of the day. And to the best of my knowledge there is no record or report of any such decree. And yet the whole science of permanent surnames is predicated on the existence of such a decree - and not just in England.

In my family-history researches, hunting down the surname Gawler, I once came across villages in south-western Somerset and neighbouring Devon whose inhabitants went by that name and several names that were variants of it. Here's the list I made at the time, from early Parish Registers (16th and 17th Centuries):
Gallow, Gowton?, Gale, Gaul, Gold, Geale, Gole, Gawle, Golde, Gawlde, Galen, Goler, Gowle, Goulde, Goole, Golle, Goale, Gould;
[and, in the two villages of Martock & Combe Florey alone]: Goldsworthy, Garland, Galleton, Galloway, Gaylord, Gay, Galley, Gayland, Galliford, Galhampton, Geall, Gee, Gillard, Gillet, Gorely, Goulde, Guller, Gully, Gulliford.

Having been trained as a professional auditor, I am always suspicious of near-coincidences, and to me it looked for all the world as though I had encountered communities of persons whose names could conceivably have been deliberate variations of a single clan name. Of course nobody talks about English clans, but it occurred to me at the time that maybe we should do. In the absence of evidence of a central decree, it still does occur to me, I'm afraid!

(If the villages had been in Scotland, I might have found names beginning with the Mc clan-name indicator, such as McCall, McCallan, McAlistair, McGill, McCullough.)

scottishcelts

6 for me. I'm maternally Campbell, and paternally Wilson.

GarryP

As I understand it, the idea of surnames was something that came across with the Normans, but only for the rich important people. Obviously if you are the legitimate sire of a noble house with position and money, you don't want to be confused with a pleb.

From there it moved down the hierarchy from 1200-1400, principally because of poll taxes - you wanted to be able to uniquely identify Tom in a region, so you could be sure he had coughed up.

And finally Henry VIII wanted births recorded, the better to tax them, and so you needed to capture that UID again. Obviously if you were recorded as Tom Berkson at birth, when you were taxed it was under the same name, and when you had a kid, he got the same name (or was considered illegitimate).

Hence tax created the surname permanence.

Gordon Barlow

Yes, that sounds plausible*** as does the possibility of ancient clan-names, of course!
*** Except for the words I quoted in bold print. In practice, it's a huge leap from the progression Tom Berkson (father) / Bill Tomson (son) to Tom Berkson (father) /Bill Berkson (son). There has to be a reason why the latter progression won out over the former. The latter pretty much presumes that all the names in the whole region changed at the one time, doesn't it? And, why didn't everybody change in the same way, including the other six of the seven presumed types of surname?

I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm just exploring a little bit further.

GarryP

I think it's supposed to be due to the first bit I described - using the 'sir' name to show you were above the plebs. The patronymic form died away as people wanted to associate with being 'noble' families, rather than rural yokels. So you'd stop saying you were 'Tom's Son' and take on a name that sounded more knobby (eg I'm a 'Butcher', not 'I'm the son of Tom the farmhand'). If you couldn't go that far, you could at least say you were Bill Berkson, son of Tom Berkson - which was a little more refined.

Gordon Barlow

Expanding on the theory of ancient clan-names a little, it seems logical to speculate that there have always been surnames. The idea that hundreds of thousands of people in England (say) were wandering around with only one name each, Century after Century and generation after generation, really doesn't seem plausible. They must all have belonged to some specific clan or similar group, and would very likely have used those names as identifiers. A relatively recent analogy exists in the African slaves in the Americas. Released from slavery, they took as surnames the surnames of their former masters (which their descendants still bear to this day) - and indeed they may well have used them even before emancipation, simply as identifiers.

Most clans, tribes, etc, seem to bear the names of some legendary person or god. The Children of Israel is the most famous, whom we call Israelites. The Celtic cultures are credited with clan-indicators that began with specific sounds that we now spell Mc, Mac and O' in Gaelic names and ap and P in Welsh ones; but the custom might well have originated in the Celts' predecessors. Who knows?

spouse of scouse

Number 6. My nickname in Oz is Macca, because heaven forbid that anyone is known by their real name

Our ancestral clan is a Highland Scottish clan. The clan was originally located in the Lochaber area of the Scottish Highlands during the twelfth century. The clan supported Robert the Bruce during the Wars of Scottish Independence.

Oh hang on. 'English surnames'