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Last name meanings
How do you find out what your last name means? There is a girl in my class from Germany and another from Ukraine and they both know, or say they know what their last name really used to mean a long time ago. Can a Canadian find out what their name meant back through history, or is that info gone forever?
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Maybe give some free advice about: What does it mean??
Well there is always the internet for you to go foor advice. If you can't find one then ask a family member you think will know it. I hope this helped
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If you have a more common Anglo-Saxon name, the best thing you can do is ask your family members before you start googling.
Sometimes names shift and change over the years. For example, there are actually two completely separate groups of people from two different parts of the world, that use the exact same last name I have now. I had to do a good deal of research to find out which group I actually got the name from.
But asking my relatives was a good place to start. They gave me the names they remembers (back to my great, great, great grandparents in some cases) and from there it was reasonably easy to find others.
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You can do the research yourself on line. Put in the name and see if you can find first a country of origin. Perhaps the name is connected to the French language, or maybe somewhere from the UK, English, Welsh, Scottish and once you discover country of origin, its easier to do a search under just names of that country.
Some of it is obvious, such as a last name of Miller means that somewhere way back in time, ancestors of yours earned a living by running a mill and grinding grain all day long. Others who have last names reflecting their occupation are Smith for a blacksmith working with metals, or Wheeler, for a person who used to make wagon wheels.
In some countries people used to pass on the first name of the father as the last name of the child. This is called Patronymic's. And other versions of that exist. I believe there are some countries that still do that. An example might be a father named Donald McNeil has a son whom he names Kevin. Kevin's last name would be Donald.
I particularly like how some names evolved from this practice such as son of (dad's name here) in the case of Dads first name being Evan, the childs last name was ab Evan meaning of Evan. In later times the a was dropped and the last name became Bevan or Bevin. The study of history of names is very fascinating.
Here's a link to dictionary example of this.
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
I have had opportunity to study Welsh history lately and find that by the 1600's most people decided they would no longer give dads first name as the last name of the children. Now they had to decide what last name to take for the family. Sometimes they decided dads current last name would also be passed on to the kids. Other's decided to choose a last name from the area they lived in. So some last names were the names of towns and regions.
If you find you are having difficulty finding where to start your search, then ask your local librarian for help in sources to browse through.
For a computer search try the phrase "Origin and history of the surname (Put your last name here). You may have to break it up into two pieces such as an example of the name Einfeld. In German, ein means one. And feld means field. So the name is One field. Perhaps an ancestor wasn't a very rich farmer and only owned one field.
Some names translated can really have you confused as to how they came to be such as actor Arnold Scwarzennegger. His name (another german name) literally translated as said means Black Negro, but in todays more politically correct language, "Black man". Makes me wonder if somewhere back in his lineage there is also some Black blood.
Have fun doing your research!
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