when did last names begin?

Question:

Last Names: How did we get/when did last names begin?

Adam and Eve were the first man and woman on earth, but if you notice they have no last name. In the bible it says we are all related because of them. So when and how did last names come about? As a matter of fact Mary, Jesus Christ, Joseph, etc. have no last names. We know GOD as God. My daughter asked me this question today and I could not answer. The only thing I was able to say was we have to be labeled some what different or no one would know who they were. If you were standing in a room and five people had the same first name as you and they called that name out we would not know which one they were talking about. Afterwards I thought about it and this is very interesting question: How did last names come about???

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Speaking for Europe at least, last names arose as a way to distinguish between people with the same name. They were orginally what were called "by-names". Some where occupational (like "Baker" or "Carpenter"), some where locational ("Atwood" - John who lives at-the-woods, or "Bywater" - Mary who lives by-the-water), some were patronymic (like "Johnson" or "MacDonald" - "mac" means "son of " in Gaelic), some where descriptive (like "Black" for someone with black hair, or "Little"), some were clan names (like "O'Neill" - Irish for "from the Neill clan"), some were epitaths (eg. "Charlemagne" translates as "Charles the Great")

Gradually these grew from bynames (which only applied to one person) to "surnames" which were passed down in families. Interestingly, there is one place where they still don't use surnames, they use patronymics: that's Iceland. There you are <Name> + <Father's Name> + either <son> or <dottir> (eg. Freya Jonsdottir or Karl Magnusson). For that reason, Icelandic phonebooks are listed by first name, rather than last name.