I'm looking through my ancestry and I've always wanted to know how someone starts their own last name!?
for example:
how did the last name "Shapiro" come from!? How did it come to be!?
thanks in advanceWww@QuestionHome@Com
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Position:Home>Genealogy> How does someone start a last name? ?Question: How does someone start a last name!? !? I'm looking through my ancestry and I've always wanted to know how someone starts their own last name!?
for example: how did the last name "Shapiro" come from!? How did it come to be!? thanks in advanceWww@QuestionHome@Com Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: last or family names often come from the place where the family lived or the type of work they did!. In the very early days 1200 or so in England at least they would add "de" meaning of e,g William de Colby - "william of (a village called) Colby Or Clarke (clerk) used to be a scribe or writer Shapiro is a Yiddish surname which occasionally is said to be derived from the medieval name of Speyer, Germany!. However, the word Shapiro is Aramaic (probably derived from the Hebrew word sapir), usually translated as "sapphire" but which refers not to the sapphire gemstone but to the lapis lazuli and reputed to be the stone which represented the tribe of Issachar on the breastplate of the high priest of Israel and thus identifying the Shapiro family with that tribe) and appears, for example, in the 11th Century Aramaic-language Jewish religious poem Akdamus a/k/a Akdamuth (line 45) and in Onkelos' commentary on Genesis 29:17!. Onkelos' commentary, believed to have been written around 110 CE, long predated the naming of Speyer (as Spira) in approximately 500 CE, and therefore has given rise to a family tradition that the city was renamed for the family and not vice-versa!. Arn't you glad you asked!?Www@QuestionHome@Com People in Europe,as a rule, did not have a surname until the last millennium!. In England most had one by the end of the 14th century!. It is said the reason for them was to identify people for taxation purposes, not necessarily to identify people as member of a family!. In the Netherlands, it wasn't until the reign of Napoleon!. They were based on a)being the son of someone b)their occupation c)where they lived d)some characteristic about them!. When they got through it wasn't impossible for legitimate sons of the same man to have a different surname and still they could have each shared their surname with others with whom they were not related!. also in many cases, it was a couple of more centuries before the same name was passed down through the generations!. Www@QuestionHome@Com |