Janeway Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 Doing a lot of ancestry research, not today, but in the last year. And the whole surname thing is interesting. Then I am sitting here watching Super Nanny and the family's name is Williams and I am thinking how they likely have that name because at some point in history, the man in the family was named William so everyone was called whatever first name place son of William and then Williams and so on.... Then suddenly..it hit me that it seems odd that all these generations later, we still have that one name, that came from one ancestor somewhere in our history. On the Danish side, that name came from the late 1800's. On the American Indian side, they did not even have surnames basically (or they did, but it was very different in presentation if you want to call it surnames), but all the relatives I have in my tree eventually ended with a female who took a husband's name. Found out, in Denmark, the law was overturned in recent decades about the -datter names and -sen names and people are starting to take their dad's name with the ending again. That is cool. Anyone think about this much? I think how the surnames work in an area says some about the cultures. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 Yes, I have thought about it. :-) It's quite interesting. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lailasmum Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 I find it interesting from the family history point of view because I can't get very far back researching up the line that carries my surname but can go much further through all the other branches. It feels disproportionately strange to not connect with the people that carry my surname even though the other family members are all equally important. It is really strange that we only carry the name of that one little branch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diplomum Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 Williams, like Thomas, Jones, Davies and Richards have their origin in Wales as surnames. Pritchard and Powell and Price also originated from ap (son of) Richard, Hywel and Rhys respectively. Here's a Wikipedia article about it, and how surnames became the norm. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_surnames 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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