62 Last Name Meanings - mental_floss List Show (Ep. 231)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon

This is Mental Floss on YouTube. And did you know that the last name Green has been around since before the 7th century

You could have gotten that name by playing the role of Green Man on May Day

which involved dressing in green and leaves. But people were also given the name Green if they just liked wearing the color green a lot

which is probably how my people got it. Anyway, that's the first of many last name meanings I'm going to share with you today in this video

brought to you by our friends at GEICO. Smith is an old English name that was given to those who worked with metal

It's probably related to a word that meant to strike. Similarly, Schmidt is a German name meaning metal worker or blacksmith

The popular Spanish last name Lopez came from the Latin word for wolf

The ancient Aramaic word for twin gave us the name Thomas. And hill is an English name referring to someone who, get this, lived on a hill

Other people got the name not from location, but from the name Hildebrand or Hilliard

In parts of England, Lynch meant someone who lived by a hill. In Ireland, though, it may have meant seaman

You know, a person who goes to sea. Sail, you tiny, mighty heroes

Get your head out of the gutter. Novak came from the Slavic word meaning either new or newcomer

and Murphy derived from the Irish term for sea warrior, which is very different from a seaman, because war

The Visigothic word for man gave us the last name Gomez. And if your last name is Cook, you probably have some ancestors who did that for a living

Same goes for Baker, and Baxter was the word for a female baker

Becker is the German version of Baker. And the surname Hall is also named after an occupation

They were the people who worked in a house or a hall. In England and Scotland the name Adams was created to mean son of Adam which you know all men are They borrowed the Adam part from Hebrew of course Similarly Rogers means son of Roger although Roger isn like the first man in an alternate version of the Bible

His name comes from the legend of the Danish king Hrothgar, who can be found in Beowulf

Hrothgar, by the way, means famous spear. There are, of course, a ton of these sons. Let's just get a bunch out of the way

Thompson is Celtic, meaning either son of Tom or referring to the place Thompson in Norfolk

Robinson could be the son of either Robin or Robert. Roberts, of course, son of Robert

And Robert means fame and bright. Both Johnson and Jones mean the son of John

The name John comes from the Hebrew Yochanan, which means Yahweh has been gracious

The name Jack is also derived from Yochanan, so Jackson's and Johnson's are really kind of the same

Evans means son of Evan, a name which changes meaning depending on your background

In Welsh, it also evolved from Yochanan. In Celtic, it means young warrior

We're learning a lot about what people used to value. Warriors, fame, religion, hills

The Spanish last name Martinez means son of Martin, and Martin comes from the Roman god of war, Mars

The Greek word for manly gave us Anders and Andrew, and therefore Anderson

The Will in Wilson is from the Germanic word meaning desire. I gotta tell my friend Wil Wheaton that

Hey, hey Will, your name means desire. Alright, I told him. And Olson, the last name of our beloved Mental Floss executive producer, means son of Ol

And the name Ol came from an Old Norse word meaning ancestors' descendants

So I guess the Olsons of the world are the sons of ancestors' descendants

Philips, of course, is son of Philip. The Greek name Philippos, meaning lover of horses, gave us the name Philip

The name Fox was taken from the animal's name. It's one of those last names that started out as a nickname

Usually people who were called Fox were clever or else had red hair or both probably just one or the other Then there the name Russell which is an Anglo word meaning red or even red Similarly white was a nickname first probably referring to a person who had white hair or a very light complexion

and brown was someone who had brown hair or wore a lot of brown clothes

But really, wasn't that everyone in like the fifth century? I guess that explains why there are so many browns

The popular Korean surname Kim means gold, and the Chinese name Lee can also mean plum

The L-E-E version of Lee comes from an Old English word meaning meadow

Stuart is a Scottish name meaning household guardian, so that would be the person who, like, handled administrative tasks for a big royal household

And Clark comes from the occupation of scribes. So I live near a hill and I'm something of a scribe, so I guess I would be a lynch-clark

The name Walker could have been someone who did fooling, which was walking on cloth to improve its quality

Another occupation related to that name, military officers who would monitor a forest area by, you know, walking

So you're like an officer of the sky. Oh, hey there, lobster. Allen means handsome, as anyone who has ever seen Tim Allen could tell you

In English, the name Myers derived from those who were the son of the mayor

In German, on the other hand, it meant town magistrate. Cohen is Hebrew for priest

Parker was either a gamekeeper or a parkkeeper. An Old English word meaning worker gave us the name right

and Carter is also English, and originally referred to a job in which someone would transport goods via cart, hence Carter

Schneider means tailor in German, the English version of course is tailor

and Mueller meant someone who operated a mill. Miller is the English version of that

In England, a cooper was someone who either made barrels or casks or else mini coopers

Moor has a few different meanings It may have meant someone who lived by a moor or someone who worked on boats or someone who was dark like Othello In Old English Perry meant someone who spent time near a pear tree In French it was someone who worked in a quarry Turner also has a couple different origins It might mean turn hair or someone who can run faster than a hair

It could also mean one who works with a lathe. In Portuguese and Spanish, Torres means towers, so someone with that last name was someone who lived by a tower

The German surname Hoffman meant someone who was a steward on an estate. And the last name Louis comes from many different cultures, so it has a few different meanings

Like an English Louis was the son of a Lois. Lewis also developed various first names in France and Germany and Normandy and so on

Those with the last name Llewellyn in Welsh usually became Lewis's in English

Young is likely to have been the English interpretation of German, Dutch, Chinese, Korean, or French

last names because all of them sounded similar to English people. So basically, Young meant other

And in Middle English it also developed as a surname for the youngest sons

Weber is German, it meant someone was a weaver, and in English, king obviously means leader

but many people adopted it who weren't rulers. You'll notice, for instance, that the Queen of England is not named Elizabeth Queen

But the name became popular among American immigrants from Ireland, and in the 16th century

it was also common to give orphans in France the last name roi, meaning king

The etymology of Garcia isn't certain, but most believe it came from a Basque word meaning

bear, or else young bear. And Rodriguez means son of Rodrigo, a name that itself means rich in glory

And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that Campbell is a combination of two Scottish

Gaelic words. Cam means crooked, and bale means mouth. So Campbell equals crooked mouth