Currently, the surname is such a familiar attribute of a person that it is difficult to even imagine that once people were free to do without it. For most of its development, humanity has been content with only the use of personal names.
The first mention of surnames
Even in the seemingly developed ancient world of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, there was no such thing as a “surname”. A number of researchers are of the opinion that the first surnames arose among Georgians in the 6th century or Armenians in the 4th century. However, these claims require additional research. At the moment, historians have no written evidence of their innocence. At that time, surnames already existed in these countries, however, most likely, they were invested with a different meaning from the modern one. They existed not to name families, but to designate huge genera.
The emergence of surnames in Europe
One can more confidently judge the origin of surnames in Europe. This happened at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries in the northern part of present-day Italy. From there, the surnames spread to nearby France, and then to Germany and England.
The spread of surnames was not instantaneous, but passed quickly enough. In Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1312, 66 percent of the townspeople were nameless. In 1,351 there were only 34 percent of them.
In England, the process of acquiring surnames was not voluntary. In the 15th century, the king ordered all citizens to receive surnames. In neighboring Scotland, this process lasted until the 18th century.
The Danish king in 1526 ordered all noble families to come up with surnames. Noble families in Sweden received similar instructions, but already in the 16th century. So the population of Europe found its roots, learned to honor and respect the family of their ancestors.
The emergence of surnames in the Russian Empire
European trends reached Russia much later. The first real family names appeared among the inhabitants of the Russian Empire only in the 15th-16th centuries. The process of acquiring surnames took a long time and lasted for four centuries. The first to acquire surnames were the privileged strata of the population - nobles and merchants. But the majority of the peasants until 1861, when serfdom was abolished, were without surname.
How did Russian surnames come about?
Most of the Russian surnames are the fruit of the creativity of the tsarist scribes. After the abolition of serfdom, the huge empire faced the problem of giving the population surnames. Often the names of fathers or grandfathers were transformed into a family name. The peasants who walked under the great princes received their names. Often, surnames were simply invented. All that was needed was the clerk's good imagination.
Perhaps it is because of this that the number of Russian surnames is so great. According to the research of the Russian philologist Vladimir Nikonov, there were about 70 thousand surnames in the twentieth century.
