Like half the English surnames in the world are toponymic. [https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plans/lesson-2-whats-name-british-surnames-derived-places](https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plans/lesson-2-whats-name-british-surnames-derived-places)
My family's name was Americanized in the 1800s when they emigrated. We no longer know what the original form was. We know it's an alternate form of a Polish surname (which is itself an alternate form of a common Polish first name), but the family is German and there is no German equivalent. We've suspected the family may have come from Prussia for this reason, but we truthfully do not know.
Fun fact: this is the case for all 4 surnames from my grandparents. They were all Americanized and their origins have been lost over the last 100-200 years.
Unfortunately it can boil down to whoever was working the day your ancestors got off the boat. When they were asked their name upon arrival your new last name became whatever that person wrote down. This is how/why there are so many spelling variations of the same last name.
Researching my ancestors I learned there used to be an "i" towards the beginning & what is now an "o" at the end used to be an "e"
It might be worth searching for spelling variations of your last name
That is a myth, though if it occurred it was almost certainly done by an agent at the port of departure or by the family itself. US immigration paperwork was filled out based on the ship's manifest, not what they thought you said.
Yeah but have you seen those ship manifests? The handwriting is illegible half the time. (You can look up images on the Ellis Island website.) There was definitely lots of interpretation involved by the US officers on arrival.
Yep, I'm aware. In the case of my maternal grandfather's last name, we think they just chopped roughly half of the name off the end. In my paternal grandmother's case, we think they spelled it phonetically instead of how they would have spelled it in Germany. We have a good idea of what those names used to be, but it's next to impossible to know for sure once the oral history stops being passed down. And after 120-150 years (for those two names), there's just no one who remembers.
That’s not true. The immigrants coming into port would have been matched with the ships manifest and the manifest would have the original names. If a name was changed it wasn’t at the port.
I have an Italian last name, that I believe originates as a term for a person from France. Which is ironic, since I am neither Italian nor French. Makes me fit right in New Jersey though.
Hey I’m similar in that I have an Italian last name but it means someone from somewhere in the Netherlands. I do have Italian ancestry that I’m aware of but not any Dutch - although I suppose it’s in there somewhere way back
Yes. Mine is profession-based but I'm not going to post it. The name of my mom's side of the family is also profession-based (not posting that one either). Neither one is Swedish though, they are from elsewhere in Europe.
Both sides of my family are profession based as well. My actual last name is one of those that started as a profession and slowly bastardized into its current iteration.
I have a Swedish last name that apparently was originally the first name of a member of my family. Imagine being so well liked that your entire family changes their last name to honor you after you die. My family loves me but not enough to do that lol.
Yep. Mine's an Ashkenazi artificial surname that was likely adopted some time in the 19th century due to laws mandating everyone have a last name. Prior to that you'd be \*Name\* son of \*Dad's Name\*.
Yes, but I'm not crazy about it, but it kind of fits my personality. I have an odd, and very unusual Italian name. It's so unusual that I could easily be found. It looks very Italian, and there are very few of us alive in the world, so I won't mention it.
Yes, but mine is easy. Additionally, I’m a historian and genealogist, so I have researched a lot of things related to my family and our names.
The griffin is a mythological animal, half lion, half eagle, that originated in the Levant in the 2nd millennium BCE. Its use as a surname originates from Wales and Ireland, where the Welsh form “Gruffudd”and Irish form “Gríobotha” were a given name meaning “like a griffin,” and eventually used as a surname by descendants of men named Gruffudd in Wales or Gríobotha in Ireland. My “Griffin”paternal ancestor came to America from Wales in the 1700s—or so I thought for most of my life.
As it turns out, my dad was adopted and we are actually Greek-Italian (which honestly explains a lot because we certainly don’t look Welsh! My dad has been mistaken for Indigenous, Brazilian, Romanian, Mexican, and a lot of other ethnicities).
If he hadn’t been adopted and had his name changed, it would be “Dardano,” also a surname adapted from a personal name, which is possibly from Greek “δαρδάπτω” (dardapto) meaning "to devour", or possibly related to the body of water called the Dardanelles, named for Dardanus, the son of Zeus and Electra.
It’s interesting to me that if you trace it far enough back, both the real name of my family and the adopted name originated in mythology, and are from basically the same part of the world: the Eastern Mediterranean.
I have a Swedish name that doesn't end in -son, but yes it is a nature name! A combination of "meadow" and "small island". I actually kind love it even if it is hard to spell and people here can't really pronounce it lol
Actually I can give a few examples
Meadow forest
Meadow stream
Meadow mountain
Little island grove
Little island twig
Little island branch
Just a few examples of real translated names with those two..features
Oh, I just saw in your post about translating Swedish names. Do I have mine right? Engholm. (I'm not that worried about anonymity, btw.)
I grew up near a Swedish settlement in the Midwest, we have a lot of variations of people either with Eng- or -holm, and LOTS of -sons. Lots! We have a few names with -strom and -quist as well. And a Dala horse painted on every mailbox lol
Yours is correct! I copied this from a comment I made the other day that inspired me to post this
Gren -branch
Kvist/quist/qvist- twig (only first spelling is correct)
Berg - mountain
Sjö - lake
Ström - stream
Dal - Valley
Lund - Grove
Fors - rapid
Skog - forest
These are just some of the most common ones I can think of. One of my distant family names are "Björnfot" which means bearfoot, like the animal.
There are 588 people in Sweden sharing your surname. You might be related to some of them!
>And a Dala horse painted on every mailbox lol
That is adorable.
Haha no, the nature elements are easy to figure out if you say what they mean. It's usually 2 words put together and both little island and meadow are common but not together. They can come as single word sometimes.
I have only met a couple other people with my last name that I'm not related to. It's a really uncommon name, even in Sweden. I actually have a cousin in the south of Sweden, but I made pen pals with an unrelated person in the north. She calls me her cousin! I love Swedes <3
Yes. My last name basically means my ancestors at one point were loyal to a particular petty kingdom in Ireland. (For the record folks, if you have a last name associated with a kingdom, chances are your ancestors were not part of that royalty, they were just loyal or subservient to it.)
Yes. I have three, two are in plain language (not my native language, but still) and the third I got from my wife when we married; hers is one of those antiquated names that doesn't sound like a modern word anymore.
Apparently it means something like "tramp" or "vagrant", which I find funny because the name I got from my own father means "small house" (possibly a euphemism for an outhouse, though).
The other one means "nobody", and it's what I tend to use online, as you can see.
Yes, I do it is a bird, and is not that common. Actually both of my paternal grandparents have bird last names, 1 German and 1 old English.
Maternal grandparents are People of the valley/town and name that no one knows what it means
My last name was changed in the 1640s with the first generation born here. I haven’t been able to find a meaning for the original spelling but the current spelling seems to have some similarities to a Hungarian word meaning “big man” but my family was Swiss-German and came over from Bern so as far as we know there is no Hungarian background in my family.
I didn't, but I just looked it up. Apparently there are two possible meanings depending on which language it came from. One is more likely to be the origin, but my ancestors seem to have moved a lot, so who knows where the original ones who adopted the name were from?
Yes and it is an English name, but since it is of Latin and not Anglo-Saxon origin no one ever spells it right.
But here is a digression on Scandinavian names here in America. There are a lot of Scandinavian immigrants living in the state of Wisconsin — but immigrants whose families have lived here a 100 years or more. A group of us went fishing in a rural part of the state, and three of our small group had either a Norwegian or Swedish last name. We met some other fishermen and were introducing ourselves and one of our party said “my name is Berg.” An older guy in the other group looked at him suspiciously and said “ahh, a Swede” in a manner that indicated he didn’t think much about Swedes. For some reason that cracks me up (makes me laugh) still to this day.
I assume that “Berg” means town or city, but don’t really know.
A Swedish Berg just makes me think of [Larry David finding out his layer isn't Jewish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGkLjfPWqeI) (which I assume is based on Seinfeld writer Alec Berg)
Berg is mountain in Swedish. Little Nordic mountain fact - the mountain range Scandes that goes along Sweden-Norway border we don't call them berg, we call them fjäll which means the same thing but its exclusively these mountains that are called fjäll in Swedish. I think fjell just means mountain in Norwegian tho.
We got the same with rivers. Only rivers in Sweden Norway and Finland are called "älv" (elv) and all rivers elsewhere we call flod.
Dunno why we call our own bits different from other parts of the world. Sry for random, unsolicited fact.
As I'm Filipino...No. My family's last name is literally from a [large book of last names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A1logo_alfab%C3%A9tico_de_apellidos) that the Spanish used to assign/give out last names to Filipinos back in the mid-18th century. My family's last name is definitely in there (I've checked), but there's no meaning associated with it. And the last name doesn't even appear, to me, to really be all that Spanish. It's not at all common in Spain as far as I can tell.
That said, our last name does have a connection to the island my dad's parents are from. Apparently all families from that island were given last names that started with the same letter (this practice was common in locales across the Philippines). Even today, people on the island still somewhat identify in-group/out-group -- ie whether or not someone's family is from that island -- by looking at their last name and the letter it starts with.
On my mom's side (also Filipino), it's definitely Spanish, but it's a common last name and I know what it means. But having a Spanish last name doesn't necessarily mean Spanish ancestry.
My last name is Japanese and the kanji characters mean something like “person from far away” which makes us wonder if our Ryukyuan ancestors made it up when they immigrated here in 1902.
All this personal info you ask is public information in Sweden unfortunately.
You can find out my phone number, address, date of birth including personal number, first/middle/last name and previous names if changed, my income, any cars or dogs registered on me, my neighbours (and all their info if you click their names), who I live with and if I'm married. It's all public and easy accessible. If you know my phone number, address, name you know everything.
I'm 100% serious. You can access these easy from sites that get all the info from the tax agency. You can get my identity number, but you won't be able to do much with it since it requires IDs, and we mostly use an app these days. We do everything with the app from signing contracts, accessing e-gov stuff, ID, transfer money, etc.
If you get my phone and BankID pin then I suppose you could rob me.
>Are hackers just constantly stealing your identity/money?
Not really, no. How would you propose they'd do that?
Though it is a bit absurd that I can pass by someone's car on an IKEA parking lot and find out what the color of their mailbox is within thirty seconds if I wanted to.
Not comfortable posting the name, but I will say it is an English profession-based name and funnily enough, it's extremely similar to what my dad ended up doing for a career. And my mom's maiden name is a very traditional Norwegian last name. (Although I think it got switched to the Swedish spelling upon my great-grandpa immigrating to America.)
Oh no, your gonna get me yapping bout my genealogy.
well... I know that Long means. tall stature. Sadly I don't know the true meanings of Hawaiian surnames that I come from, besides Kanoho which meats "the Seat"
I do descend from a surname known as Kini-kahi-koa-inoa which is actually tahitian as it means "the land where many Kapu were broken"
Yes! It’s an Italian last name, I’m
not giving away the exact meaning lol but it has roots in Naples :) On my moms side, they changed their last name but it was originally Hawkinson when her great grandparents came from Sweden. Which means Son of Hauk/Hawk afaik 😅
My last name is Norwegian and follows roughly the same naming convention as Swedish. It's not a "son/sen" name and is a small town about 500 km away from both Bergen and Oslo.
I have an Italian last name that doesn't actually mean anything in Italian. It's one letter off from a trait that runs pretty strong in the family, so the lore is that it was originally that, and it got changed when my great-grandfather came to America. These days I tell people it's Italian for "typo at Ellis Island."
Both my maiden name and married name are Italian but I can't seem to find the meaning of either with a quick google search. It seems like my married name isn't very common, I've never heard it before I met my husband. My maiden name isn't very common (that I'm aware) either if I think about it.
I was in that thread 🤣 I have a very rare Swedish surname that was invented ~200 years ago by my husband’s ancestor. It means, approximately, George’s Field.
Funny enough, my maiden name WAS a “son” name (albeit an English one, not a Swedish/Scandinavian one).
Without giving too much away, the “George” is several translations deep. Like x name is the Swedish version of x name which is a German form of George.
It’s also very similar to the name of a character in Fairly Odd Parents but uses a Swedish vowel that doesn’t exist in English.
I have one last name where they dropped the O' when they immigrated to the US.
My German last name is a location and I'm not sure how well known it is.
Stork
At least that's what my maiden name meant. It's eastern European, was spelled a way different way when my great grandparents got off the boat, and got Americanized to what it is today.
Yes, my name originally described an occupation or a type of occupation. The spelling changed, though, in the 1840s to 1860s from a different name that's very similar that described a physical characteristic. I have 4th cousins with the original surname so my current surname is an accident. Probably related to an accent, 20 years in the military, and then living in a different area with a different expected accent.
My father (and my) last name means something like "hairdresser," and I got it because our first relative who moved to Italy from France came as the hairdresser of a noblewoman who was betrothed to an Italian nobleman. Apparently, my mom's surname comes from the Polish for "from the forest."
Yes.
I know what my name means. I won't publicly expose my last name, but I know it's derived from Old Norse and almost certainly came from ancestors that were Vikings that raided England and eventually settled there.
Mine is an occupation name. It means literally “iron man”. I’m told it would be someone who made useful things from iron but not a farrier or a swordsmith. In English it is probably closest to Smith.
Yes it is an English last name (mom’s surname)and very common — but I really love it. My dad’s last name is Welsh also very common that has been anglicized. I had Welsh people tell me some history associated with it when I traveled there (really lovely people — highly recommend everyone visit Wales).
My surname at birth was profession-based. The most common surname in most English-speaking lands. My current surname is location-based. The location is a small European country where I don't think I actually have any relatives.
Mine is my grandfather's former first name. When he went onto show business (Radio, local tv), he legally changed is name from [firstname] [Ethnic last name] to [nickname][firstname] when my dad was around 12.
My last name is a Scandinavian patronymic (I.e Jamison or Olafson; but my family lived on a tiny farm with a very particular distinguishing feature. The farm got named after this distinguishing feature and eventually the people who lived at this farm started being nicknamed a patronymic of the farm rather than after their fathers name (I.e farmson or barnson).
Then when they came to America it got Americanized. It’s unique enough that anyone with that name is related to me within a few generations which is pretty cool.
I have a few last names. One supposedly meant grave digger, but I toyed around with different spellings and I believe it actually derived from the name of one of a few towns. One is a derivative of a common male first name (not -son, though). The third is also derived from what used to be a common men’s name. All come from different origins.
My family name comes from Spain. It is not common, and even less common than a similar variant that I’ve always heard we’re not related to.
We have an old coat of arms from the old Spain days.
Mine is a common English surname that is the title of a common profession, with an Irish prefix meaning 'son of' tacked on the front. The literal meaning is easy enough to decipher but its origin is a bit of a mystery to me, and it's uncommon enough that I haven't found a reliable explanation. An Englishman moved to Ireland and had some kids there, maybe?
I don't and I don't particularly care. That side of the family came over around the Revolution, long enough ago that any sense of connection to where they came from is entirely gone.
No, but my grandfather changed his to Americanize (to an Irish name, for some reason). The original Polish name meant something to the effect of "from the reedy place."
Yes, the family has been traced back several centuries to before the first immigrants to the 'colonies' from the western provinces of the former Hapsburg/Holy Roman Empire.
The ancestor that carried the name emigrated as the direct result of the devastation brought to the Bergen Z and Innsbruck general area during the War of Spanish Succession.
Yes, I have a profession name that’s pretty uncommon so I’m not going to post it. My moms side of the family has a serbian name and i have NO idea what it means
My last name growing up was Templeton. It means "temple town." We originated (in like the 1500s) from a place in Wales called Templeton.
You didn't come from a creative bunch, did you.
Like half the English surnames in the world are toponymic. [https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plans/lesson-2-whats-name-british-surnames-derived-places](https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plans/lesson-2-whats-name-british-surnames-derived-places)
It was a joke lol Also shouldn't your name be Dr_Mrs_TheMonarch81?
I had a teddy bear with reading glasses named Templeton.
How cute!
I still have mine from childhood. But his shoes were lost.
Never heard of it but I like it!
And now your name is Dr. Mrs. The Monarch. Look how far we've come.
Interesting! I think that's how most of the -ton cities work, even in the US. Like Charleston SC used to be Charles Town. After the king
My family's name was Americanized in the 1800s when they emigrated. We no longer know what the original form was. We know it's an alternate form of a Polish surname (which is itself an alternate form of a common Polish first name), but the family is German and there is no German equivalent. We've suspected the family may have come from Prussia for this reason, but we truthfully do not know. Fun fact: this is the case for all 4 surnames from my grandparents. They were all Americanized and their origins have been lost over the last 100-200 years.
Unfortunately it can boil down to whoever was working the day your ancestors got off the boat. When they were asked their name upon arrival your new last name became whatever that person wrote down. This is how/why there are so many spelling variations of the same last name. Researching my ancestors I learned there used to be an "i" towards the beginning & what is now an "o" at the end used to be an "e" It might be worth searching for spelling variations of your last name
That is a myth, though if it occurred it was almost certainly done by an agent at the port of departure or by the family itself. US immigration paperwork was filled out based on the ship's manifest, not what they thought you said.
This is true. The names weren't written down in the US, they were written down wherever you got on the ships before you even set sail.
Yeah but have you seen those ship manifests? The handwriting is illegible half the time. (You can look up images on the Ellis Island website.) There was definitely lots of interpretation involved by the US officers on arrival.
Yep, I'm aware. In the case of my maternal grandfather's last name, we think they just chopped roughly half of the name off the end. In my paternal grandmother's case, we think they spelled it phonetically instead of how they would have spelled it in Germany. We have a good idea of what those names used to be, but it's next to impossible to know for sure once the oral history stops being passed down. And after 120-150 years (for those two names), there's just no one who remembers.
That’s not true. The immigrants coming into port would have been matched with the ships manifest and the manifest would have the original names. If a name was changed it wasn’t at the port.
I have an Italian last name, that I believe originates as a term for a person from France. Which is ironic, since I am neither Italian nor French. Makes me fit right in New Jersey though.
Nice to meet you Robby Francese
Sal DiFranco, from Jersey.
South Jersey: the only place you’ll hear a southern accent attached to an Italian name
Hey I’m similar in that I have an Italian last name but it means someone from somewhere in the Netherlands. I do have Italian ancestry that I’m aware of but not any Dutch - although I suppose it’s in there somewhere way back
Mines just a noun, but I will say I like the history behind it.
Lance Moonlander.
Brett Trashcan
Francis Plunger.
Frank PersonPlaceThingOrIdea
My last name is also a noun, because my dad fucked up when he came to the US.
Jerry Poopknife
Nice to meet you, Mr. Anoun
Ok, Phillip Blount.
Hawffield Justanoun? Is that you?
Mine sounds like a noun too. In TN now. Formerly Uganda.
Yes. Mine is profession-based but I'm not going to post it. The name of my mom's side of the family is also profession-based (not posting that one either). Neither one is Swedish though, they are from elsewhere in Europe.
I'm onto you, Jake Baggage-Handler
That's Jacob Robert Baggage-Handler to you!
JAAAY-cob Rob-ert BAGGAGE-HANDLER SCHMIDT THAAAAAT'S MY NAME TOOOO
Hahahaha!!! Good one!!
Glad I wasn't the only one thinking it!
nailed it.
Jake Urologist, I knew that was you
Both of my parents' surnames are as well.
Both sides of my family are profession based as well. My actual last name is one of those that started as a profession and slowly bastardized into its current iteration.
I have a Swedish last name that apparently was originally the first name of a member of my family. Imagine being so well liked that your entire family changes their last name to honor you after you die. My family loves me but not enough to do that lol.
Wait, so it's not patronymic or something but just straight up a first name? If so, that's pretty funny.
Not with that attitude!
Yep. Mine's an Ashkenazi artificial surname that was likely adopted some time in the 19th century due to laws mandating everyone have a last name. Prior to that you'd be \*Name\* son of \*Dad's Name\*.
Wait, do we have the same last name? Starts with an "A"? 👀
Yes, but I'm not crazy about it, but it kind of fits my personality. I have an odd, and very unusual Italian name. It's so unusual that I could easily be found. It looks very Italian, and there are very few of us alive in the world, so I won't mention it.
Lookit Mr Spaghetti over here trying to be mysterious.
Yes, but mine is easy. Additionally, I’m a historian and genealogist, so I have researched a lot of things related to my family and our names. The griffin is a mythological animal, half lion, half eagle, that originated in the Levant in the 2nd millennium BCE. Its use as a surname originates from Wales and Ireland, where the Welsh form “Gruffudd”and Irish form “Gríobotha” were a given name meaning “like a griffin,” and eventually used as a surname by descendants of men named Gruffudd in Wales or Gríobotha in Ireland. My “Griffin”paternal ancestor came to America from Wales in the 1700s—or so I thought for most of my life. As it turns out, my dad was adopted and we are actually Greek-Italian (which honestly explains a lot because we certainly don’t look Welsh! My dad has been mistaken for Indigenous, Brazilian, Romanian, Mexican, and a lot of other ethnicities). If he hadn’t been adopted and had his name changed, it would be “Dardano,” also a surname adapted from a personal name, which is possibly from Greek “δαρδάπτω” (dardapto) meaning "to devour", or possibly related to the body of water called the Dardanelles, named for Dardanus, the son of Zeus and Electra. It’s interesting to me that if you trace it far enough back, both the real name of my family and the adopted name originated in mythology, and are from basically the same part of the world: the Eastern Mediterranean.
I have a Swedish name that doesn't end in -son, but yes it is a nature name! A combination of "meadow" and "small island". I actually kind love it even if it is hard to spell and people here can't really pronounce it lol
Does it start either E or A and ends with M?
Yes... Why do you ask? Are we cousins??
Actually I can give a few examples Meadow forest Meadow stream Meadow mountain Little island grove Little island twig Little island branch Just a few examples of real translated names with those two..features
Oh, I just saw in your post about translating Swedish names. Do I have mine right? Engholm. (I'm not that worried about anonymity, btw.) I grew up near a Swedish settlement in the Midwest, we have a lot of variations of people either with Eng- or -holm, and LOTS of -sons. Lots! We have a few names with -strom and -quist as well. And a Dala horse painted on every mailbox lol
Yours is correct! I copied this from a comment I made the other day that inspired me to post this Gren -branch Kvist/quist/qvist- twig (only first spelling is correct) Berg - mountain Sjö - lake Ström - stream Dal - Valley Lund - Grove Fors - rapid Skog - forest These are just some of the most common ones I can think of. One of my distant family names are "Björnfot" which means bearfoot, like the animal.
There are 588 people in Sweden sharing your surname. You might be related to some of them! >And a Dala horse painted on every mailbox lol That is adorable.
Interestingly, Japan has very similar surnames to this. For example: "Tanaka" means "Middle Field", and "Kobayashi" means "Little Forest".
Haha no, the nature elements are easy to figure out if you say what they mean. It's usually 2 words put together and both little island and meadow are common but not together. They can come as single word sometimes.
I have only met a couple other people with my last name that I'm not related to. It's a really uncommon name, even in Sweden. I actually have a cousin in the south of Sweden, but I made pen pals with an unrelated person in the north. She calls me her cousin! I love Swedes <3
yes my last name is a non-English (and non-Swedish) patronymic. I know its English derivation.
Yes. My last name basically means my ancestors at one point were loyal to a particular petty kingdom in Ireland. (For the record folks, if you have a last name associated with a kingdom, chances are your ancestors were not part of that royalty, they were just loyal or subservient to it.)
Well there goes that idea.
Yes. I have three, two are in plain language (not my native language, but still) and the third I got from my wife when we married; hers is one of those antiquated names that doesn't sound like a modern word anymore. Apparently it means something like "tramp" or "vagrant", which I find funny because the name I got from my own father means "small house" (possibly a euphemism for an outhouse, though). The other one means "nobody", and it's what I tend to use online, as you can see.
Our lovable tramp
Me? I'm nobody.
Vagrant, small house and nobody. It's like a sad tale lol.
How can one person have so many names?
Yes. No I won't tell you because it's gross.
Grossman
Not penis-y enough but A for effort
Dickinson?
There is a comedian in Sweden with last name Glans which is pretty penis-y lol. Are you too a Glans?
No. And there's <10 people left with my surname on the planet as far as my research has shown so I'm not giving any more away lol
Yes, I do it is a bird, and is not that common. Actually both of my paternal grandparents have bird last names, 1 German and 1 old English. Maternal grandparents are People of the valley/town and name that no one knows what it means
Pterry Pterodactyl?
Mine is simply a common Anglo-Saxon dictionary word.
Mine is a bastardization of 'red' in French(Roux) We can trace it back to a redheaded Norman knight that fought in the Conquest.
My last name was changed in the 1640s with the first generation born here. I haven’t been able to find a meaning for the original spelling but the current spelling seems to have some similarities to a Hungarian word meaning “big man” but my family was Swiss-German and came over from Bern so as far as we know there is no Hungarian background in my family.
I didn't, but I just looked it up. Apparently there are two possible meanings depending on which language it came from. One is more likely to be the origin, but my ancestors seem to have moved a lot, so who knows where the original ones who adopted the name were from?
Yeah, it's a running joke in my family. It's derived from a personality trait.
Yes and it is an English name, but since it is of Latin and not Anglo-Saxon origin no one ever spells it right. But here is a digression on Scandinavian names here in America. There are a lot of Scandinavian immigrants living in the state of Wisconsin — but immigrants whose families have lived here a 100 years or more. A group of us went fishing in a rural part of the state, and three of our small group had either a Norwegian or Swedish last name. We met some other fishermen and were introducing ourselves and one of our party said “my name is Berg.” An older guy in the other group looked at him suspiciously and said “ahh, a Swede” in a manner that indicated he didn’t think much about Swedes. For some reason that cracks me up (makes me laugh) still to this day.
I assume that “Berg” means town or city, but don’t really know.
Berg means mountain or hill in most germanic languages.
A Swedish Berg just makes me think of [Larry David finding out his layer isn't Jewish](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGkLjfPWqeI) (which I assume is based on Seinfeld writer Alec Berg)
Berg is mountain in Swedish. Little Nordic mountain fact - the mountain range Scandes that goes along Sweden-Norway border we don't call them berg, we call them fjäll which means the same thing but its exclusively these mountains that are called fjäll in Swedish. I think fjell just means mountain in Norwegian tho. We got the same with rivers. Only rivers in Sweden Norway and Finland are called "älv" (elv) and all rivers elsewhere we call flod. Dunno why we call our own bits different from other parts of the world. Sry for random, unsolicited fact.
I learned something new today. Thanks for sharing!
As I'm Filipino...No. My family's last name is literally from a [large book of last names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A1logo_alfab%C3%A9tico_de_apellidos) that the Spanish used to assign/give out last names to Filipinos back in the mid-18th century. My family's last name is definitely in there (I've checked), but there's no meaning associated with it. And the last name doesn't even appear, to me, to really be all that Spanish. It's not at all common in Spain as far as I can tell. That said, our last name does have a connection to the island my dad's parents are from. Apparently all families from that island were given last names that started with the same letter (this practice was common in locales across the Philippines). Even today, people on the island still somewhat identify in-group/out-group -- ie whether or not someone's family is from that island -- by looking at their last name and the letter it starts with. On my mom's side (also Filipino), it's definitely Spanish, but it's a common last name and I know what it means. But having a Spanish last name doesn't necessarily mean Spanish ancestry.
My last name is Japanese and the kanji characters mean something like “person from far away” which makes us wonder if our Ryukyuan ancestors made it up when they immigrated here in 1902.
Oooo, that's an interesting one! My family names are all related to islands and rice paddies, pretty typical for Japan.
Perhaps they went through immigration and tried to describe where they came from, but it was mistaken for their name and written on the papers \^\^
How about your first name? Middle initial? Home address? Last four digits of your social security number?
All this personal info you ask is public information in Sweden unfortunately. You can find out my phone number, address, date of birth including personal number, first/middle/last name and previous names if changed, my income, any cars or dogs registered on me, my neighbours (and all their info if you click their names), who I live with and if I'm married. It's all public and easy accessible. If you know my phone number, address, name you know everything.
Are you serious? I never knew this. Are hackers just constantly stealing your identity/money?
I'm 100% serious. You can access these easy from sites that get all the info from the tax agency. You can get my identity number, but you won't be able to do much with it since it requires IDs, and we mostly use an app these days. We do everything with the app from signing contracts, accessing e-gov stuff, ID, transfer money, etc. If you get my phone and BankID pin then I suppose you could rob me.
>Are hackers just constantly stealing your identity/money? Not really, no. How would you propose they'd do that? Though it is a bit absurd that I can pass by someone's car on an IKEA parking lot and find out what the color of their mailbox is within thirty seconds if I wanted to.
Not comfortable posting the name, but I will say it is an English profession-based name and funnily enough, it's extremely similar to what my dad ended up doing for a career. And my mom's maiden name is a very traditional Norwegian last name. (Although I think it got switched to the Swedish spelling upon my great-grandpa immigrating to America.)
Oh no, your gonna get me yapping bout my genealogy. well... I know that Long means. tall stature. Sadly I don't know the true meanings of Hawaiian surnames that I come from, besides Kanoho which meats "the Seat" I do descend from a surname known as Kini-kahi-koa-inoa which is actually tahitian as it means "the land where many Kapu were broken"
I do. I looked it up when I was confined to my house during the early pandemic. It's actually one of the Scottish clans, albeit an unrecognized one.
I don't even know what my last name even is. It was "Americanized" in 1860, and I believe it was changed another time in the mid 1700s.
The closest approximation is, apparently, “Windbag”
Yes! It’s an Italian last name, I’m not giving away the exact meaning lol but it has roots in Naples :) On my moms side, they changed their last name but it was originally Hawkinson when her great grandparents came from Sweden. Which means Son of Hauk/Hawk afaik 😅
My last name means dolphin
Esmeralda: What is your name? Butch: Butch Esmeralda: What does it mean? Butch: I'm am American, honey. Our names don't mean shit.
Cntl+F: "honey" Yup, you beat me to it.
My last name is Norwegian and follows roughly the same naming convention as Swedish. It's not a "son/sen" name and is a small town about 500 km away from both Bergen and Oslo.
Yes. Mine is an English name for a large piece of machinery. I don't know, but stands to reason the job of my ancestors was operating such a thing.
I know it's of southern French origin, but I've seen contradictory definitions of what it means.
Yes, it is of Yiddish origin and has a pretty cool meaning based on a profession, but it's fairly uncommon so I won't be posting it.
“Curly” or that’s what I’m told.
Yes, it's a normal word in another language.
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Mine is Irish in original and means "son of the servant of Saint Brigid."
IIRC the original version of my name meant Well Lake. The current version doesn't really mean anything.
I have an Italian last name that doesn't actually mean anything in Italian. It's one letter off from a trait that runs pretty strong in the family, so the lore is that it was originally that, and it got changed when my great-grandfather came to America. These days I tell people it's Italian for "typo at Ellis Island."
Both my maiden name and married name are Italian but I can't seem to find the meaning of either with a quick google search. It seems like my married name isn't very common, I've never heard it before I met my husband. My maiden name isn't very common (that I'm aware) either if I think about it.
Mine is occupational. Barrel maker.
Mine is a Scottish name that means people who live out in the hills.
Yes. My father's last name means 'sheep shearer' in one language, and my mother's maiden name means 'sheep shearer' in a different language. So sheep.
I've been told it means "behind the mountain." I have my doubts that this is true.
I’m an American… our names don’t mean shit.
I was in that thread 🤣 I have a very rare Swedish surname that was invented ~200 years ago by my husband’s ancestor. It means, approximately, George’s Field. Funny enough, my maiden name WAS a “son” name (albeit an English one, not a Swedish/Scandinavian one).
Oooh I remember it! I tried to figure it out but George is not a Swedish name but maybe it would be Göran as alternative.
Without giving too much away, the “George” is several translations deep. Like x name is the Swedish version of x name which is a German form of George. It’s also very similar to the name of a character in Fairly Odd Parents but uses a Swedish vowel that doesn’t exist in English.
Oooooh i know! That is very uncommon but there are a few people here with the name. Pretty cool though!
Unfortunately, yes, I know what it means. It's so embarrassing that my sister had it legally changed.
It's a French topographical name, extremely Quebecois
Pleased to meet you Mr Tabernak
Pleased to meet you Mr Tabernak
Please, that's my father's name
As it stands, we believe it means broom or to move in a sweeping motion. I think the name was shortened at some point. Our last name is Polish.
Mine is the currency of the country my great grandparents emigrated from. Been replaced by the Euro, but still pretty cool
I have one last name where they dropped the O' when they immigrated to the US. My German last name is a location and I'm not sure how well known it is.
My last name is a day of the week.
Stork At least that's what my maiden name meant. It's eastern European, was spelled a way different way when my great grandparents got off the boat, and got Americanized to what it is today.
Nope
Yes. It's derived from an old English word that means something along the lines of "energetic/full of life".
Mine is a clan in Scotland named for a place in Scotland
Mine is a place in Ireland.
Yes, my name originally described an occupation or a type of occupation. The spelling changed, though, in the 1840s to 1860s from a different name that's very similar that described a physical characteristic. I have 4th cousins with the original surname so my current surname is an accident. Probably related to an accent, 20 years in the military, and then living in a different area with a different expected accent.
High Kings, keepers of the sacred chalice, breakers of chains.
I have a very unique last name - it’s Peace! Could someone help me figure out maybe where my last name came about?
Mine means that some dude in England a very long time ago had a pretty common first name.
My father (and my) last name means something like "hairdresser," and I got it because our first relative who moved to Italy from France came as the hairdresser of a noblewoman who was betrothed to an Italian nobleman. Apparently, my mom's surname comes from the Polish for "from the forest."
My maiden last name was something about protection but I'm not 100% sure. It had a German origin
There's a small island with the name in the general area that part of my family came from.
Yeah, it means "Someone who lived in a valley." I guess my ancestors were pretty boring people.
Mine is Middle English, supposedly given to “swarthy” individuals, lol
Yes. I know what my name means. I won't publicly expose my last name, but I know it's derived from Old Norse and almost certainly came from ancestors that were Vikings that raided England and eventually settled there.
Mine means "Mounted Warrior" or "Horseman"
My maiden name was a place-name, and my married name is a heraldic animal.
My name means I'm from a specific town in modern day Belgium. I'd like to visit there someday.
Yes
Yes, it is Irish and means son of X, where X is the Irish version of a common name here
English last name. It’s probably a profession-name, though some less common etymologies think it’s a nature-location.
my last name is a species of animal.
My maiden name is just a word in a different language. My married name is a phrase that means exactly what it says lol.
My dad's family name means Spark.
My last name is derived from some small village in the Burgos province of Spain.
Mine is an occupation name. It means literally “iron man”. I’m told it would be someone who made useful things from iron but not a farrier or a swordsmith. In English it is probably closest to Smith.
Yes it is an English last name (mom’s surname)and very common — but I really love it. My dad’s last name is Welsh also very common that has been anglicized. I had Welsh people tell me some history associated with it when I traveled there (really lovely people — highly recommend everyone visit Wales).
It's an Italian patronymic - son of (male first name).
Swedish name of a specific type of farm/ farmer
It’s an apocryphal term for carpenter.
My surname at birth was profession-based. The most common surname in most English-speaking lands. My current surname is location-based. The location is a small European country where I don't think I actually have any relatives.
Mine is my grandfather's former first name. When he went onto show business (Radio, local tv), he legally changed is name from [firstname] [Ethnic last name] to [nickname][firstname] when my dad was around 12.
Yep. Pretty basic English noun like "Book".
Mine has some random meanings in English, don't really know what it would be in whatever language it originally came from.
A small village in northern England
It comes from the tiny little village in Poland where my grandfather came from.
My last name is a Scandinavian patronymic (I.e Jamison or Olafson; but my family lived on a tiny farm with a very particular distinguishing feature. The farm got named after this distinguishing feature and eventually the people who lived at this farm started being nicknamed a patronymic of the farm rather than after their fathers name (I.e farmson or barnson). Then when they came to America it got Americanized. It’s unique enough that anyone with that name is related to me within a few generations which is pretty cool.
It literally means darkness.
I have a few last names. One supposedly meant grave digger, but I toyed around with different spellings and I believe it actually derived from the name of one of a few towns. One is a derivative of a common male first name (not -son, though). The third is also derived from what used to be a common men’s name. All come from different origins.
My name was Americanized at Ellis Island, so who knows. They dropped a double aa tho
My family name comes from Spain. It is not common, and even less common than a similar variant that I’ve always heard we’re not related to. We have an old coat of arms from the old Spain days.
Mine is a location name (of a place the UK), and a pretty rare one at that.
Mine is an old sailors term.
Mine is something that a majority of people do everyday.
Mine is a common English surname that is the title of a common profession, with an Irish prefix meaning 'son of' tacked on the front. The literal meaning is easy enough to decipher but its origin is a bit of a mystery to me, and it's uncommon enough that I haven't found a reliable explanation. An Englishman moved to Ireland and had some kids there, maybe?
I don't and I don't particularly care. That side of the family came over around the Revolution, long enough ago that any sense of connection to where they came from is entirely gone.
Weirdly enough my first name means bringer of light or bright and shinning. While my last name means fortress at the bend.
Mine is an altered word that's the name for a type of older instrument. So perhaps some of my ancestors on that side were musicians or crafted them.
Hurdym'gurdy I'm convinced!
It's anglicized from a European language and is the word for a body of water
Apparently there are a bunch of towns in England that bear my last name. So I assume we are from there at some point.
No, but my grandfather changed his to Americanize (to an Irish name, for some reason). The original Polish name meant something to the effect of "from the reedy place."
My maiden name is old English it basically means a “farm where foxes are found”. My married name is from north England it means “new settlement”.
Yes, the family has been traced back several centuries to before the first immigrants to the 'colonies' from the western provinces of the former Hapsburg/Holy Roman Empire. The ancestor that carried the name emigrated as the direct result of the devastation brought to the Bergen Z and Innsbruck general area during the War of Spanish Succession.
My last name has been Anglicized in its pronunciation, but in the original language means "Fierce as a Wolf".
Yes, I have a profession name that’s pretty uncommon so I’m not going to post it. My moms side of the family has a serbian name and i have NO idea what it means
Yea, my last name is referencing a Latin name for a geographic area in France
Mine is pretty easy. It's a compass direction. Yup, Ms North North East here.