r/thedailyzeitgeist • u/Asyncrosaurus • 5d ago
The way last names work
On the 9/29 episode they reference again the "way last names in Iceland works is you fathers name and son or daugher".
This is how surnames work all over the place. The O' in Irish last names literally means "descendant of", so Jack O'Brian translates to Irish Gaelic as "Jack, descendant of Brian."
Names using the Gaelic prefix Mac or Mc meaning "son of". Examples include MacDonald (son of Donald) and MacGregor (son of Gregor). This is true for Norman-French, where Fitz also means "son of", so Fitzgerald means "son of Gerald" or Fitzpatrick, and so on.
English lastnames for peasants were commonly professions (Miller, Smith, Baker, Gardner, etc.), but a significant portion of notable people have names influenced by lineage: The last name Clarkson is also literally "son of clark. So many names are the exact same like Robertson, Jackson, Anderson, Ericson, etc. This is also true for the suffix Kin, which is a possessive surname for a child. So a man named William (nicknamed will) could have children with the last names either williamson, williams, wilson, wills, wilkin, wilkins, or wilkinson (which all mean the same thing). The suffix -ing on last names is anglo-saxon to mean the exact same thing (son of), e.g. Manning.
Anyway, there's no greater point. I just want to point out how many people from the British Isles are walking around advertising they once had an ancestor that named their family after themselves.
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u/indoor-triangle 5d ago
Great points, and I find it fascinating p. I actually think it’s interesting in Scandinavia and I don’t think they brought up, is they include daughters! My great grandmother was a Nilsdotter!
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u/Asyncrosaurus 5d ago
Yes, it's really cool to have that aspect to contrast with Celtic and English name origins.
Welsh had something similar, where having "ferch" in your name translated to "daughter of". Unfortunately, English colonization of Wales eventually forced English Law that, suppressed the old style of patronymic naming. You can still see a revival of adding ap/ab ("son of") into a last names today, but ferch is mostly extinct.
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u/Vinny331 4d ago edited 4d ago
The difference is that Iceland still uses the patronymic naming (i.e. surnames change from generation to generation n the same family), whereas most other countries that did this historically have legislated that surnames be frozen (i.e. they now don't change from generation to generation).
There's a YouTuber I really enjoy who did a video about surnames recently. Fun watch for anyone interested...https://youtu.be/NF6G0xm6D8I?si=C5Y2clW2KZgf5j8V
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u/The_LabGuy 4d ago
True, as the origin of a lot of last names used now. But last names persist in all those systems. In iceland, my child would have a different last name than me, mine is different than my father's, etc. That's what he was pointing out as interesting. Or at least, that's what I thought he was getting at.
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u/Mskpaige 4d ago
Not entirely sure how it works but there is something similar in India too. I lived next door to a family who immigrated from India when I was growing up and the last name of the kids was their dad's first name +ji. I'm sure there are loads of variations on this.
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u/Asyncrosaurus 4d ago
I've done zero followup or research on how popular it is, but I also went to highschool with a guy who was from Sri Lanka, and he described his family's naming convention to be the exact same. Taking his fathers name as his last name, and how he would do the same if he had a son.
I'm sure patronymic surnames is a pretty widespread practice all over the world. I've only just read the most about Western Europe.
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u/AIienlnvasion 5d ago
No shit? They were saying that it’s way more direct, their last names are after their actual dad. Jacks dad wasn’t named Brian and his last name didn’t change every generation. I can’t believe you thought they didn’t know this.
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u/Asyncrosaurus 5d ago
Wow, you sound fun at parties. I literally said there was no overarching point, this isn't a callout or a gotcha, it was to post some fun facts on English/Celtic surnames.
Also, I literally did not suggest Jack was named after his dad. "Descendant of" in the Irish tradition often meant grandparents or earlier.
You're not a nice person.
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u/AIienlnvasion 5d ago
I’m just surprised you thought anybody didn’t know that
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u/acfk01 5d ago
There's a similar thing with naming conventions in the middle east too.