Who started last names, or how did they come about?

Question

Who started last names, or how did they come about?

Answer 1

Some guy by the name of John had a famous father and became Johnson, Son of John.  Or last names were professions like Carpenter, Shoemaker, Black or Miller.  Or they were military or royalty titles like Von Muller.  If you owned or ran a town called Muller, you were From Muller.  

And then there are those unfortunate last names like Fukes or L******z - nobody knows where these come from.

Answer 2

It began in various parts of the world at different times.

In England, surnames became generally hereditary during the 13th.and 14th. centuries (1200 and 1300s) They mostly came about from a place of origin, like Wood, Hill, Field, Sheffield or London, an occupation, like Smith, Cook, Baker or Butcher, a personal relationship, William/son, John/son, Thom/son, or with a prefix like Mac, or from a physical characteristic, like Short, Strong, or Redhead. Some may even have taken the name of the lord of the manor they were tied to.

Surnames  began simply because there were just too many Tom's John's and Williams, it became necessary to have another way to identify people, instead of John the son of William the smith, it gradually became John Smith, the son of William the smith, and although John Smith might have been a farmer, he continued using his father's name, passing it down to his son, and so on.

Otherwise it would have been George the cooper, son of John the farmer, son of William the smith, etc.,etc. In addition, the wives names complicated matters to an even greater degree, it was inevitable that a less complicated system had to evolve.

The Normans arrived in England some 100 or more years

before the adoption of surnames began. No one said, right,

from tomorrow every person must have a surname. Surnames

gradually became the norm over several generations. Until the mid 14th century the vast majority of English  people were unfree, they were villeins, serfs or bondsmen, tied to the land their masters owned and were obliged to carry out a fixed amount of, sometimes onerous, work every week, they were not free to leave. If the Normans had introduced surnames for taxation purposes, as some posters claim, they could have done it over one night if they had wanted. In less than 9 months, between December 1086 and August 1087 the Normans surveyed the whole country and compiled the "Domesday Book" !  It is inconceivable that it would have taken them more than 250 years to establish surnames, by which time their influence had in any case virtually disappeared.  (250 years represents some 12 generations)

Answer 3

Most people in Europe did not have a surname until the last melennium. in England, most people had one by the end of the 14th century.  I understand they were not introduced so much to identify you  as a member of a family but the Norman introduced them to identify you for taxation.

They were based on being the son of someone, your occupation, where you lived or some characteristic about you.

Example

John had 4 sons, Henry, George, Sam and Robert

Henry if he could write would sign his name Henry son of John.  When he took or was assigned a surname he became Henry Johnson, Henry Jones or Henry Johns.

George was a fisherman and was known tha way.  He became George Fisher.  He couldn't become George Jones because they already had a country singer in the village named George Jones.  

Sam is someone people till this day still mention.  He lived on or near a hill and became Sam Hill.  I have Overtons in my family and it just means over town(settlement). Can you imagine how many people lived over a town. Some people took the name or the town or the castle nearby.  

Robert had brown hair and became Robert Brown.  

Still it was a couple of more centuries before the same surname was always passed from father to son.

Four legitimate sons of the same man each had a different surname but they each could have all shared their surname with others not in their family.

I understand in The Netherlands they didn't take surnames until the 18 century.  They were introduced during the reign of Napoleon.  The Dutch thought they would be temporary and being humourus they gave themselves obnoxious names.  Once their names became permament they had one heck of a time getting those names changed.