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Current Surname Searches

Genes Reunited have a full search for your surname free of charge

So how did Surnames come about in history?

Originally it is really known as the family name, an identification tag which is transmitted by family members from generation to generation. The Romans introduced Surnames and therefore we have them to thank for making the search slightly easier. Just imagine how difficult it would be to search for your ancestor without a surname!

Ireland was one of the first countries to adopt hereditary surnames, and Irish surnames are found as early as the tenth century. How did particular surnames come into existence? Surnames are generally derived from four sources....

• The surname comes from the name of the person's father
• The surname comes from the person's place of living,
• A surname comes from the person's occupation
• Finally and most interestingly the Surname is a descriptive nickname for the person.

Surname breakdown from the name of the person's father

Many surnames have small prefixes such as "Mac" this means "son of," while "O" means "grandson of." This naming pattern can be seen clearly in Sweden, where each subsequent generation followed suit: Hans Peterson would be the son of Peter; Hans Peterson's son would be called Jan Hansen.

A similar situation can be found in the New World, in naming patterns in Dutch New Amsterdam. Some common use of this in English names include the surnames Robertson, Johnson , Ericson, and Anderson .

Surname coming from the person's place of residence.

Place names were often taken as a surname. They were derived from the name of the place where one resided or from a description of the place. Mokotoff is from the Russian village of Mokotow; the Irish Slattery is originally from Ballyslattery in east County Clare. More than half the English surnames used today derive from geographic descriptions, such as Churchill. Various suffixes which indicate a topographical feature are lee (meadow), bank, don (town), field, house, and thorp (village).

Surnames from the person's occupation

Occupations also helped distinguish one person from another. Bill Thatcher may have worked on your thatched roof in the same place where Bill Carpenter was the local craftsman. Bedell was the policeman of the village; Fletcher was the arrow-maker. You will often find names which describe ancestors' work, such as Tanner, Goldsmith, Carpenter, and Shepherd.

Surname is a descriptive nickname for the person

Sometimes nicknames became surnames. These types of surnames were often used to describe something unusual about an ancestor's physique.

Small , Littlejohn and Blackbeard.

So knowing where your surname came from with the results of a simple search, may well lead you to more clarity on what your ancestor looked like or where they came from and what they did.