Great Uncle Fred, when did people stop making up new surnames? (Tom, Autumn 2008)

I do not think that they have yet stopped making up new surnames and I do not think that people ever will stop making them up. Surnames as we understand them are comparitively recent and came about basically because life was a wee bit confusing without them. In the 13th century, one third of all men in England were called either John or William or Richard. As the population grew and people moved about more, it became necessary to distinguish: you might have four Williams in a village: the one in the forge became William Smith, the big one became William Little, the one from the woods became William Woodruff and the one whose father was Nicholas became William Nixon. Presumably it did not take long for this random process to become official until everyone in the country was covered. But the process continues. I have just read of a singer called John Legend because that was his nickname but it is becoming his real name. Many women do not like to change their names as they used to and sometimes the children get double-barrelled names, which are often brand-new. And people from overseas still anglicise their names, to be better understood. There must have been an explosion of surname-getting in Medieval England (less of one in Scotland where the clan system provided surnames in a more systematic fashion) but it has never stopped happening since, especially because spelling has only been standardised for about the last 200 years. I think that`s all true and the answer to the question is - they didn`t.

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