Are you technically related to everyone with your last name?

Question:1. Are you related to everyone who shares your last name, even if the relation is distant and goes many generations back in time?

2. Or is it possible to have many different families with the same last name by coincidence, who do not share any common roots?

Just something I have always been curious about. If you know anything about this please share your thoughts!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: 1. Are you related to everyone who shares your last name, even if the relation is distant and goes many generations back in time?

2. Or is it possible to have many different families with the same last name by coincidence, who do not share any common roots?

Just something I have always been curious about. If you know anything about this please share your thoughts!

Absolutely not. In some cases, you MIGHT be related, if, for instance, a person's name was altered, thus all descendents can show to come back to that name.
For the MAJORITY of names.. the origin of the name has to do with things such as occupation, where they lived, etc. The surname that persons used, frequently had NOTHING to do with any family connection. This is not just possible.. it is the more common.
This concept (that persons with the same name must have a common ancestor) is probably one of the most frequent roadblocks that shows up in this area. If you are starting to reseach your family.. my advice out the door to everyone, is to not even be concerned with a surname. You would not be researching the Jones family.. you research who is/was the parents of your direct ancestor, John Jones, who was born in 1875 in Alabama.

It's possible to have several familys with the same name.

1. No, that would be impossible. There are over 3.5 million people in South Korea with the last name of Kim. Im sure there are many more named Smith or Johnson.

2. Last names where made by the head of the family's way back. And many current last names are translations of many different languages. People would come from a different country and change their last name in order to "fit" in better in the new country

Names which reflect a trade such as Smith, Taylor/Tailor, Thatcher, Baker or similiar then no, you're probably not related as there are many branches. Names based on a general locality such as Wood/Woods are also very widespread. Surnames in England only took hold in about the 15th century and later than this in Scotland and Wales. Those sending in the suffix "-son" mean exactly that (eg. Robertson - son of Robert). Mac or Mc also means 'son of', so McDonald and Donaldson are the same, meaning that the most that you can deduce about your name is that at one point you had an ancestor called Donald - it doesn't mean that you are all related from the same man who lived in a village in Perthshire in the 1500s. It doesn't work like that - there are many Robertsons, Donaldsons, MacDonalds etc, who are not related to each other.

However, there are quite a lot of surnames that are exclusive to certain areas of the country. The name Kernick for example only usually exists in Cornwall. Many other names have a hardcore base in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire or East Anglia and are almost unheard of outside their home territory.

There are not many people who share my surname, but no matter where they are living now (US, Australia, South Africa or New Zealand), they all seem to have found a link back to the one place in England where my name is most common - Cheshire. Assuming the records existed and were reliable enough to prove it, I suspect that most people with my name would indeed be distant relatives. Proving it is another matter indeed. Emigration to other local parishes doesn't help as this is rarely recorded in the records, but they have to move outwards just a bit at some point for fresh blood, otherwise if they stayed put pretty soon everybody would have four legs and three arms or something!

It is most likely that many last names have different origins. For example, I have a "Fender" line in my family (I am a cousin to Leo Fender, creator of the Fender Guitar Company). My Fender line traces back to Germany. However, there is also another Fender line that I am not connected to that also traces back to Germany. The original versions of both Fender lines were different and the two families were not related. But, as German ancestors of those two families migragted to the US, their accent became an issue, and in each case, their surname was interpreted by the English / Americans as "Fender". As a result, today there are more than one Fender lines and they are not all related to each other. This happens with a lot of surnames. Many became "Americanized" once the ancestors stepped off the ships.

I have 3 classmates with the same family name. they can't all be related because they are all totally different from each other.

If you were able to trace everyone in the world's ancestry far enough back you would find a common ancestor-at least one common ancestor.

Europeans -and their descendants in the rest of the world-descend from ten men who lived 40,000 years ago. The great majority descend from five of those men. If you consider all the possibilities for gene exchange in Europe in the past 40,000 years you will see that people of European descent are pretty likely to be related more recently than 40,000 years ago.
It also depends on the surname. If the surname is Smith then probably not all come from the same Smith. If the surname is something unusual like Beauchamp and they live in the USA then there is a more than 99% chance that they both deascend from the same man who was born in Cosgrove, Eng. in 1666. If the surname is Murphy( from the Irish mac Murchadha or uí Murchadha) it is arguable that they descend from different men named Murcha, but recent DNA technology indicates that all white families named Murphy descend from Niall Noigíallach ( Niall of the Nine Hostages) a midiaeval Irish king.

So the answer is: ultimately two people are somehow realted in their ancestry, but not necessarily through the same surname.

We would all be related if we could trace our linage back far enough. But, just because they have the same last name does not mean that they are close relatives.

If I recall correctly, about the 12th century is when the surname began to appear. It was based on one's occupation or one's father's occupation. John The Capenter becoming John Capenter or John The Baker's son becoming John Bakerson.
Furthermore, since these villages for the most part existed in a simiar fashion, same technology available, same duties being performed, etc. It is very likely unrelated persons will hold the same job in different villages, and this will lead to unrelated families having the same name, even with variations in spelling.

If you go back to the people who walked out of Africa 40,000 years ago, yes.

If not, use your head, dear. How many Chinese people named Lee are related to the confederate general, Robert E. Lee? How many guys with RAF mustaches who have three first names and surname Park are related to Koreans named Park?

Back when they were starting to use last names, most villages had a Smith and a Miller. That's how those last names started up. Some Germans named Schmidt and Meuller changed the spelling when they came here.

Simple answer;

No!

Take my name for example. It has Irish, French, and even Pakistani origins!

In the Western world names were not written down by the ordinary people, many of whom could not read or write, even up to the early 20th century. The people (officials and priests) who wrote the names down decided how they should be spelt. This can be seen time and again in church records and census entries where some families have surnames that are spelt differently in various places. The writing down of names by others created a conforming regime that caused many names that may have sounded similar to be spelled in an accepted way. There could have been lots of different surnames that were changed to conform to an accepted version, so the answer to your questions are:
1 No
2 Yes