Where Did Last Names Come From? - Big Questions (Ep. 8)

Hi, I'm Craig. I also have a last name, and this is Mentalfloss on YouTube

Today I'm going to answer Cameron Wein's big question. Where did last names come from

Well, Cameron Wines, the adoption of last names or surnames happened at different times for different cultures

But I'm going to try to give you an overview of the few key moments of last name Let's get started. Smith

That's right, I gave that last sentence a last name. I can do that. I can do what I want. Smith

In China, family names go back so far that they're only explained by legend

The story goes that Emperor Fu-Ci, who was a godlike ruler that lived for almost 200 years, implemented the family name

system around 3,000 BCE. Originally, people took their mother's name, but around 12th century BCE, they started using their

father's name. These names came from many places, including a dynasty's name, a person's title, and a person's

occupation, and a person's butt. person's butt if their name was but. There were no last names in Japan or Korea until

around 1900. In Korea, most of these last names were actually borrowed from the Chinese

In Japan, people chose their names or they asked their priests to give them their names

Before 500 BCE, people were only known by their first names in ancient Greece. Then last names

were introduced At first they were just a way to identify people in Athens The politician Kleisthenes set up a system in which people would have to be known officially by their region in addition to their name Last names evolved from this system In the Roman Empire people were originally known by a single name

But it's hard to pinpoint when last names became common there because there were so many shifts in leadership and naming policies

Eventually Romans ended up having three names, the Prey Nomen, Nomen and Kognomen

The Pray Nomen was a name parents gave children. The Nomen identified the person's clan

And the Kognomen was either a nickname or hereditary name, like a last name

and the abdomen is part of the body. England started using last names around 1066 after the Norman conquest of Britain

because the Normans imposed the system. The English developed four different ways to come up with a surname

by occupation, hometown, nickname, or baptismal name. From occupation we got last names like Baker, Taylor, and Smith

From locations we got Moore, Hill, and Wood. Nicknames were things like Blunt, which meant blonde, or fox, like the animal, or the Michael Jay

Finally, there were baptismal names. For example, people would go by Williams or Williamson

if their father was named William. Sometimes these English names weren't obvious enough. For example, Brewster meant a woman brewer

Fletcher was an arrow maker, and Jenner meant engineer. If you have a big question that you'd like answered

leave it below in the comments. Thanks for watching Mental Floss on YouTube. See you next week. Smith