| Back when people lived in clans or small villages, everyone had just
one name: a "call" name or what we would now describe as a "given"
name. One name was all they needed because everyone knew each other.
As population increased, it became necessary to distinguish between people
with the same call name.
One obvious way to distinguish between, for example, two John's in the
same village, would be to indicate whose son each is. In other words,
John, son of William, or John, son of Robert; or more simply, John, William's
son, or John, Robert's son. These have come down to us as Williamson,
Robertson, and all the other -son's and -sen's (in several European languages,
not just English). At some time, surprisingly late in some regions,
the patronymic became fixed as an unchanging surname. But before
discussing the fixation of patronymics as surnames, it's important to understand
how patronymics work. |
In the days before surnames, a person's call name (John, Ann, Matthew,
etc.) was followed by the name of their father, usually with a grammatical
ending indicating the name was a patronymic. Using Danish patronymics
as an example, here would be a series of fathers and sons, before the use
of surnames began:
Father: Søren
Hansen
Son: Niels_Sørensen
Grandson: Hans_Nielsen
Great-grandson: Lars Hansen
For daughters, the ending is -datter/-sdatter:
Father: Søren
Hansen
Daughter: Agate Sørensdatter
Father: Jacob
Larsen
Daughter: Christina Jacobsdatter
Father: Peter
Andresen
Daughter: Katrine Petersdatter
While "-datter" is the typical ending for a Danish female patronymic, there
are regions where you will find that female patronymics follow the same
pattern as males (i.e., with the -sen ending or, in some cases,
with just the abbreviated "-s" ending). For example:
Father: Jes Larsen
Daughter: Karen Jessen
Father: Conrad Knudsen
Daughter: Birthe Conrads
Danes were very resistant to adopting surnames and were among the last
in Europe to do so, when it was finally mandated by law ca. 1850.
I can use my own Danish ancestry as an example showing when surname fixation
took place, that is, the generation in which the person did not use a patronymic
based on their father's call name, but instead adopted the father's patronymic
as a fixed SURNAME (distinguished here in ALL-CAPS).
Hinrich ?sen
Mathias Hinrichsen
Søren Mathiesen (c1784-1840)
Andreas MATHIESEN (1819- )
Carsten MATHIESEN (1842-1904)
Andreas MATHIESEN / MATTHIESEN
(1867-1921) — the immigrant in 1886
Arthur Carsten MATTHIESEN
(1895-1967) — my grandfather
As you can see, Mathias and Søren each used a traditional patronymic
based on his father's call name. If the tradition had been maintained,
Søren's son, Andreas, would have been called "Andreas Sørensen,"
but we can see that, in this generation, Søren's patronymic was
fixed as a modern surname. I can only guess that the second "t" was
added in the U.S. because the English patronymic of the same derivation
(viz., Mattheson, for "Matthew's son") is spelled with two t's.
There are some important ramifications resulting from this process,
other than the obvious. One is that people, today, whose surname
is based on a patronymic, may be totally unrelated to other people with
the same surname. Picture, if you will, that ca. 1850, everyone in
Denmark was mandated to use a surname and most adopted their father's patronymic
as a surname. Two brothers, Mathias and Søren, now have all
their descendants named, respectively, MATHIESEN and SØRENSEN —
yet these families are closely related. In contrast, two unrelated
men named Søren, on opposite sides of Denmark, now both have all
their descendants surnamed SØRENSEN — yet they are not related at
all. It is for this reason that, as a Danish MATHIESEN, I feel no
"sense of clan" with other Danish MATHIESENs, beyond my near relatives.
A "reunion" of MATHIESENs — in Denmark or in America — would simply bring
together a lot of unrelated strangers, hence there isn't likely to be such
a gathering. For my family, it would make much more sense to have
a reunion of "Danes from Visby" — our home town in Denmark (where my GG-grandfather's
house still stands and is still lived in).
The other important ramification is that once you've worked back to
the point where surnames disappear, it becomes essentially impossible to
trace your ancestry any further using traditional methods, unless you happen
to be descended from nobility or royalty. What can be used beyond
this point is DNA analysis, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities
for researchers who have hit this wall. However, one other ramification
of patronymics is that Y-chromosome DNA surname projects are meaningless
for them because, as I mentioned above, so many individuals with the same
surname are not related while many with different surnames
are
related. The only logical way to organize Y-DNA projects for those
with patronymic surnames is regionally, at the outset, and then genetically,
after test results are known, as is the case in the Danish
Demes Regional DNA Project. But back to the subject of patronymics…
Not all cultures dropped the use of patronymics
when surnames were adopted. Some simply added the surname,
and the patronymic became what we would call a "middle" name. Russians
follow this custom and are more likely to call each other by their given
name and patronymic, than by their given name and surname. Here is
an example of four generations, from father to son to son to daughter:
Ivan Petrovich
[or Petrov] ZOKOLOV
Mikhail Ivanovich
[or Ivanov] ZOKOLOV
Ivan Mikhailovich
[or Mikailov] ZOKOLOV
Anna Ivanova ZOKOLOV
The vast majority of Russian surnames were, however, themselves formed
from patronymics; so, from a grammatical point of view, it's likely to
appear someone has two patronymics, as in the example above where Zokolov
also looks like it could be a patronymic. But the true status of
the last name as a surname will be apparent because it will be passed unchanged
from generation to generation, while the patronymic will keep changing.
Here are some examples of patronymics in different languages:
| Language |
Ending(s) |
Examples |
| Danish |
-sen or -s (for a son or daughter)
-datter or -sdatter (for a daughter) |
Lars Hansen
Søren Friedrichsen
Marte Sørensdatter |
| Swedish |
-son (for a son)
-sdottir (for a daughter) |
Hans Anderson
Niels Larson
Sonya Svensdottir |
| Dutch |
-sen or -son (for a son)
usually shortened to -se or -s
-sdockter (for a daughter)
usually shortened to -sdr, sd, -se, or -s |
Willem Jansse
Cornelis Dirkse
Jannetje Adrians |
| Russian |
-in, -yn, -ov, -ev, -vich, etc. (for a son)
-vicha, -a, -ova, -ovna, -ina, etc. (for a daughter)
The grammatical formation of Russian patronymics is actually
more complicated than implied here, but you get the idea. |
Anton Alekseev
Dmitri Borodin
Sofiya Alekseeva
Anastasiya Borodina |
| Polish |
-owicz (for a son)
-owna (for a daughter) |
Janek Aronowicz
Kondrat Dawidowicz
Kornelia Dawidowna |
| Norman |
Fitz- ("son of") |
Robert FitzAlan
James FitzRoy |
| Scots |
Mac- or Mc- |
John MacDonald
Daniel McRay |
| Irish |
O' or Mc- |
John O'Brian
Adam McDermott |
| Welsh |
ap (for a son)
ferch/verch (for a daughter) |
Gruffyd ap Rhys
Dafydd ap Llywelyn
Angharad ferch Maredudd |
-s
The Welsh were very late in adopting surnames,
and many of these devolved from Christian given names. |
Jones = John's son
Davis = Davd's son
Williams = William's son
Roberts = Robert's son
etc. |
|
| There is, lastly, the question of how to enter patronymics in your
genealogy software. In my opinion, the patronymic should be treated
as a middle (given) name, not a surname. For those individuals who
have only a patronymic and no surname, the best course, in my opinion,
is to leave the surname field blank, just as I believe that is the best
course to take when the surname is simply unknown. [Please, never
put the husband's surname in the wife's surname field just because you
don't know the wife's maiden name!]
If you want to distinguish between people whose surname is simply unknown
and those who had no surname, you need to use some consistent designation.
For example, the most common designation for someone whose surname is unknown
is "LNU." All but the most novice genealogists are aware that "LNU"
is the standard acronym for, "Last Name Unknown." As far as I know,
there is no "standard" acronym for there being no surname at all, but let
me coin one here: "SNU," for "Surname Not Used." Anyone who
knows what LNU means can likely surmise what SNU means.
In actual practice, instead of LNU or SNU, I use a line of five underscores
to signify no surname is used and a line of four underscores plus a question
mark to indicate the surname is simply unknown:
Surname Not Used (SNU): _____
Surname Unknown (LNU): __?__
But any system will do as long as you apply it consistently and it's intuitively
obvious what you are doing. TMG (The Master Genealogist software
program) uses --?-- for an unknown surname.
One advantage to not putting the patronymic in the surname field
is apparent when viewing an alphabetized index of your database because
all those without surnames will be grouped together, in alphabetical order
by their call names. If you put the patronymic in the surname field,
not only will these individuals will be scattered throughout the index,
it will not be apparent for whom the name is a patronymic and for whom
it is a surname, not unless you consistently enter patronymics in
Initial Caps and surnames in ALL-CAPS, which is at least a viable alternative
and one I strongly recommend if you insist on putting the patronymic in
the surname field. |
