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Every once in a while, I wonder about last names.
There was a time, several hundred years ago, when people didn't have last names. You had a first name, and then some distinguishing fact. Maybe it was your father's name. You'd be Erik, John's son. Or maybe you were the acknowledged bastard of some local noble, in which case you'd be Brian, Fitz (bastard of) Patrick. Or maybe it would be the family business, particularly if it was a prestigious one, like Smith or Miller. Or maybe it was the place where you'd grown up - you were the Robert from the local village of Rosefield (or perhaps Rosenfeld), or you'd come from the prestigious and sophisticated city of Vienna (and thus were named "Weiner" - which is only a small part of how I got my family name, but never mind that just now).
And then something changed. Last names happened. I don't know how or why. Was it by royal decree? Was it that the king took on a last name in order to tout his lineage, which then, of course, became the noble fashion, and it spread from there? Was it just some cultural change? Something else?
Think of what it must have been like during that transition.
John, Erik's son, fathered Michael, John's son. He, in turn, fathered... Robert Johnson. Which must have been very confusing for the older generations. His name is Johnson, but he's Michael's boy?
Brian was born into a family of millers, but there wasn't really a place for him there. His older brothers did the work of maintaining the mill, and he'd never really gotten the hang of all that complex machinery (the pinnacle of power-generating technology). There was no way he could go off to some other town and build a mill of his own. But he was pretty good at working with the flour produced by the mill. So he became Brian Miller... the baker.
And what of David Rosenfeld, whose family had moved out of town a generation before, but who had himself been born and raised in Hamburg?
All these people with names that should have described something about them, but that didn't really fit. I guess it'd have helped that many others of their generation were going through the same thing... but not all of them would have. Not the ones born shortly before the change took place. Did Robert Johnson's oldest brother stay George, Michael's son? Did he become George Michaelson? Or George Johnson?
It just seems like it all would have been very weird. I wonder what it was actually like.
There was a time, several hundred years ago, when people didn't have last names. You had a first name, and then some distinguishing fact. Maybe it was your father's name. You'd be Erik, John's son. Or maybe you were the acknowledged bastard of some local noble, in which case you'd be Brian, Fitz (bastard of) Patrick. Or maybe it would be the family business, particularly if it was a prestigious one, like Smith or Miller. Or maybe it was the place where you'd grown up - you were the Robert from the local village of Rosefield (or perhaps Rosenfeld), or you'd come from the prestigious and sophisticated city of Vienna (and thus were named "Weiner" - which is only a small part of how I got my family name, but never mind that just now).
And then something changed. Last names happened. I don't know how or why. Was it by royal decree? Was it that the king took on a last name in order to tout his lineage, which then, of course, became the noble fashion, and it spread from there? Was it just some cultural change? Something else?
Think of what it must have been like during that transition.
John, Erik's son, fathered Michael, John's son. He, in turn, fathered... Robert Johnson. Which must have been very confusing for the older generations. His name is Johnson, but he's Michael's boy?
Brian was born into a family of millers, but there wasn't really a place for him there. His older brothers did the work of maintaining the mill, and he'd never really gotten the hang of all that complex machinery (the pinnacle of power-generating technology). There was no way he could go off to some other town and build a mill of his own. But he was pretty good at working with the flour produced by the mill. So he became Brian Miller... the baker.
And what of David Rosenfeld, whose family had moved out of town a generation before, but who had himself been born and raised in Hamburg?
All these people with names that should have described something about them, but that didn't really fit. I guess it'd have helped that many others of their generation were going through the same thing... but not all of them would have. Not the ones born shortly before the change took place. Did Robert Johnson's oldest brother stay George, Michael's son? Did he become George Michaelson? Or George Johnson?
It just seems like it all would have been very weird. I wonder what it was actually like.
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