Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?...

Question:Why didn't anyone in the Bible have a last name except for Mary Magdelaine??????

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Why didn't anyone in the Bible have a last name except for Mary Magdelaine??????

We don't even know if Magdelaine was her last name, it could have been where she came from or a word about her that distinguishes her from others.

Magdelaine was just the town she was from and probably wasn't considered a last name(surname) as we think of them today. The Bible writers probably put her name that way in order to distinguish her from the other Marys.

No one had them back then. Jesus, if he had a surname, would have been Jesus bar Joseph (meaning Jesus son of Joseph) or Jesus Nazareth meaning Jesus of Nazareth.

If you are of European origins, your ancestors did not have a surname until the 14th century and probably some even later.
Don't know if you understand what European is. That is someone from England, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Belgium etc.

Edit: MInd Bender is right. It would have been Jesus ben Joseph.

Nobody in Europe, Africa or the Middle East had last names for 1200 years after the death of Christ. Sorry, but Mary the Magdalene was special, but not 1200 years ahead of her time.

Research is about finding what exists in terms of your family history. You can't have what does not exist, it's that simple.
As for persons who make the claim that they have searched their family back to Adam and Eve.. please don't assume that they know what they are talking about, or that what they claim is fact.

The oldest use of family or surnames is unclear. Surnames have arisen in cultures with large, concentrated populations where single names for individuals became insufficient to identify them clearly. In many cultures, the practice of using additional descriptive terms in identifying individuals has arisen. These "descriptors" may indicate personal attributes, location of origin, occupation, parentage, patronage, adoption, or clan affiliation. Mary Magdalene's name identifies her as being "of Magdala" — the town she came from, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee — and thus distinguishes her from the other Marys referred to throughout the New Testament. In the sense of using place names as last names, Magdalene would have been her surname.
Typically, however, last names were not used until much later.
In Japan, for instance, family names were uncommon except among the aristocracy until the 19th century.
In Ancient Greece, during some periods, it became common to use one's place of origin as a part of a person's official identification. In the Roman Empire, the bestowal and use of clan and family names were not strictly inherited in the way that family names are inherited in many cultures today. Eventually, though, family names began to be used in a manner similar to most modern European societies. By the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, family names were uncommon in the Eastern Roman (i.e. Byzantine) Empire. In Western Europe where Germanic culture dominated the aristocracy, family names were almost non-existent. They would not significantly reappear again in Eastern Roman society until the 10th century.
In the case of England, the most accepted theory of the origin of family names is to attribute their introduction to the Normans and the Domesday Book of 1086.--a sort of census taken by William the Conqueror (my mother's family name--Coston--is listed in it, not only as a family name but the location in Shropshire County where they lived).
In Britain, hereditary surnames were adopted in the 13th and 14th centuries, initially by the aristocracy but eventually by everyone. By 1400, most English people and Scottish people had acquired surnames, but many Highland Scots and Welsh people did not adopt surnames until the 17th century, or even later.
Most surnames of British origin fall into seven types: (1)
Occupations--Cook, Carpenter, Archer; (2) Personal characteristics --Short, Brown, Whitehead, Long; (3) Geographical features --Hill, Lee, Wood, Fields, Marsh ; (4)
Place names --London, Hamilton, Sutton, Flint, Laughton; (5)
those descended from land-owners, the name of their holdings, manor or estate ; (6) Patronymics, Matronymics or ancestral--male names like Richardson, Williams, Johnson , or female names like Molson (from Moll for Mary), Madison (from Magdalen or Madeline), Emmott (from Emma), Marriott (from Mary) or from a clan name (for those of Scottish origin, e.g., MacDonald, Forbes) with "Mac" Scottish Gaelic for son. ; and (7) Patronal, from patronage (Hickman meaning Hick's man, where Hick is a pet form of the name Richard) or strong ties of religion Kilpatrick (follower of Patrick) or Kilbride (follower of Bridget).
In the Americas, the family names of many African-Americans have their origins in slavery. Many of them came to bear the surnames of their former owners. Many freed slaves either created family names themselves or adopted the name of their former master.

What you are seeing is an anglicised form of identification....and since they, like surnames themselves, are just ways to distinguish one person from another, is quite a valid way of doing this.

But it wasn't HER surname. In fact, it isn't even her "first" name. Both the mother of Jesus and the person refered to as Mary Magdaline, would have been Miriam (or a few other translitated forms). Mary wasn't a jewish name of the time, and is in fact an anglicised form of Miriam.

But more to the point, there were no surnames in Judaism at that time. It was patronymics. A person was known as <someone> ben <father> for a male and <someone> bet <father> for a female. Even in many european countries, Jews only switch to surname forms as a result of orders from national governments, often as late as the late 1800s.

But people back then (even today) were called by the first name. When there was possible confusion - usually in literature - a means of discrimination between individuals is necessary. And also realize that especially in the case of women, the writer might not know the "father" or the father's name didn't remove the ambiguity (there were an lot of Itsaks, Ibrahims, etc.) another way to distinguish people had to occur. This was often done by referencing a place of origin, maybe a physical feature (long hair, dark skin, heavy set, etc.), an area they currently lived, etc.

In the New Testament, Mary is Mary! And any time you see Mary it is assumed to refer to the mother of Jesus. No ambiguity. But what happens now when another Mary (or Miriam) shows up? You can't just say Mary because that would be confusing. So you get Mary Magdaline. What is Magdaline? It's actually a geonymic - or habitational surname. Very much like patronymics. But in this case, it would be Miriam of Magdala. Magdala was town on the Sea of Galilee where she supposedly came from.

If there were other names that would be ambiguous, you would also find additional discriminators of some form added to remove the ambiguity. She wasn't the only one. Consider Joseph Arimethia (the person whose tomb Jesus was buried) - needed to distinguish him from Joseph - Mary's husband.

Mary was identified as Magdalene to distinguish her from others. That is how last names began, but Magdalene wasn't a "last name" as we use the term. Others in the New Testament actually also had these identifying terms. For instance, Simon the Zealot was distinguished from other Simons by the identification with a political group. James and John the sons of Zebedee were distinguished from others. At times the patryonomic term "bar" was used to denote "son of".