What does my last name mean, and where did it come from?
Most English-language last names began in one of four ways: a father's name (Johnson), a job (Smith), a place (Hill) or a nickname (Brown). To find what yours means, look it up in a surname dictionary, then trace your own line back, because two families with one name often aren't related, and spellings moved around.
The four kinds.
| Where it came from | Examples |
|---|---|
| A relative | Johnson, Thomas, MacDonald ("son of Donald") |
| A job | Smith, Baker, Taylor |
| A place | Hill, Green, Lancaster |
| A nickname | Brown, Long, Armstrong |
A name usually started as a way to tell one John from another, then passed down to the next generation and stuck.
How to look yours up.
For British and Irish names, the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland covers 45,600 of them, with where each began and who carried it early. Ask your library, since many give free access to Oxford's reference books. A quick web search is fine for a first idea. Treat it as a lead.
Why your family's story may be different.
- One name, many families. Plenty of unrelated men were called Smith because they all worked a forge.
- Spelling moved around. A clerk wrote what he heard, and your family may appear under several spellings.
- It wasn't Ellis Island. The inspectors checked names against ship lists and didn't write them down. When a family's name changed, it was usually the family who changed it, often later.
- Some last names are young. In parts of Wales they only became fixed in the 1800s. In Sweden, a son of Olof was Olofsson and a daughter Olofsdotter, so the name changed every generation.
Is there a family coat of arms?
Not for a last name. The College of Arms, which grants them in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, puts it plainly: "There is no such thing as a 'coat of arms for a surname'." Arms go to one person and their descendants. So the crest on a mug with your name on it probably belonged to someone else's family, and a crest is only the part on top of the helmet anyway.
The best answer is your own line.
Follow your name back one father at a time until you reach the person who arrived, and look for where they came from. That tells you more about your name than any dictionary.
Or just ask.
Tell Ancestral Fire one name, and it reads your tree, searches FamilySearch Family Tree once you connect it, and tells you what it found, with the source behind each fact. A real answer:
Who was the first in my family to leave Ireland, and what became of him?
Among those with immigration dates recorded, the earliest to leave was your great-grandfather Patrick Kennedy (born about 1823 in Dunganstown, County Wexford), who immigrated to Boston around 1847. He settled in Boston, married Bridget Murphy, worked as a cooper, and died there in 1858 at about age 35.
From the Kennedy family's published tree, asked as John F. Kennedy.
See a whole conversation on How it works, or what it finds in one family: The Tudor family tree: Henry VII to James I.
Keep reading.
- How to find an old obituary, free. Start with FamilySearch, which is free and has obituary collections, then try Chronicling America, the Library of Congress collection of free newspaper pages through 1963.
- Questions to ask your grandparents. Ask about something specific: a kitchen, a first job, a day they still remember.