If you end up researching it, I'd love to read your conclusions.
My guesses from doing genealogical research are that it was a gradual process that happened over centuries and depended on where you were, how big of a community you were part of, your status, how literate your community was, and probably a whole lot of other things, and the forms the names took varied greatly by region (whether patronymic/matronymic; descriptive by looks, job, oddity, etc; locale, etc. And then throw in all the different languages.
I do know that in the US as recently as the late 19th century, spellings of names varied dramatically, due to lack of literacy (you go thte spelling the person writing down your name guessed at if you didn't know it), whim (I want to spell my name THIS way, not THAT way, for reason x, y, or z), and heritage (Catherine vs Katherine vs Katerin, etc., plus variants and diminutives).
I love reading etymology of surnames, since so many are descriptives (Goldwater makes me laugh!).
And now the name John Smallberries from Buckaroo Banzai is stuck in my head. I blame you *g*
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My guesses from doing genealogical research are that it was a gradual process that happened over centuries and depended on where you were, how big of a community you were part of, your status, how literate your community was, and probably a whole lot of other things, and the forms the names took varied greatly by region (whether patronymic/matronymic; descriptive by looks, job, oddity, etc; locale, etc. And then throw in all the different languages.
I do know that in the US as recently as the late 19th century, spellings of names varied dramatically, due to lack of literacy (you go thte spelling the person writing down your name guessed at if you didn't know it), whim (I want to spell my name THIS way, not THAT way, for reason x, y, or z), and heritage (Catherine vs Katherine vs Katerin, etc., plus variants and diminutives).
I love reading etymology of surnames, since so many are descriptives (Goldwater makes me laugh!).
And now the name John Smallberries from Buckaroo Banzai is stuck in my head. I blame you *g*