What are some surnames from the victorian era?

Question

I am trying to do a magazine based on victorians and how they lead their life and I need a name so i can make a fictional character

Answer 1

Yes, the Victorians were not that different from us, after all only living about 5 or so generations ago, surnames had become established and were basically the same.  There was less geographical mobility though so in 1881 surnames would have clustered more in a local area and become more widespread later.  Try the National Trust surname map if you want to type in a surname and get some idea about its distribution in the British Isles in 1881.  There was more difference in first names, just the traditional ones that we have today, but no Sharon, India etc.  The 1881 census is free at www.familysearch.org so you could get some ideas from there if you are really stuck.

Answer 2

the same as today of course

Answer 3

I would use a standard English sounding surname, but I guess that depends on the ethnicity of your fictional character. Surnames in the Victorian era are just like ours today. If you want to find an interesting surname, or one that would have been common to a specific area, I suggest that you play around with the 'surname meaning' function on ancestry.com.

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/defa...

The only thing that you have to pay close attention to when naming your fictional character is their first name. Victorians would not have had names like Greyson and Kayli. For some good examples of Victorian first names, take a look at this website:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ance...

To find more charming old-fashioned names, it's a good idea to look up the top 1000 names from past decades, such as 1880, 1890 and 1900. You can do with at the ssa website. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ . Just look at the section to the bottom-right, where it says 'top 1000 names by decade.

Good luck!

Answer 4

Given that the Victorians were our ancestors, it stands to reason that they had the same surnames as we have today.

To choose fictional names I often just randomly open the telephone directory.

Answer 5

Have a look at these

http://www.victorianlondon.org/

http://www.victorianweb.org/

also have a look at

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/

Answer 6

Exactly the same as the ones we have today. The Victorian era wasn't that long ago it ended in 1901. It's the Christan names that would make the difference.