Surnames

The study of how names came to be is called onomastics. In Britain, surnames were rare until the arrival of William the Conqueror. Until the nineteenth century the Dutch still did not use surnames generally. This perturbed Napoleon who ordered everyone to take a surname if only for tax purposes. The Dutch, with gleams in their eyes, took the most general surnames from some nearby feature of the countryside. Jan, who lived not far from a grassy dike, became Jan Groendyke. Anyone who lived near a dam, and that was quite a few people, decided to become van Dams. In Britain and the rest of non-Scandinavian Europe, surnames came from some geographic feature or location (Lincoln), the father or mother’s name (Johnson), an occupation (Miller), or a nickname (Armstrong).