When the Government Makes You Get a Surname 

yes, like "Modig" meaning "brave", to describe the attributes of that soldier. Imma pin this comment for discussion, and it was actually in the original script for the video, but I ended up cutting it out lol

Yes exactly! I was hoping it was going to be brought up. I'm really into family research and have quite a few soldier names on my dad's side of the family.

it’s actually really cool. Most people I know with unique Swedish last names have soldatnamn, myself included

Soldatnamn are weird, some of them became first names over time, and some (like mine) seem like borgarnamn until you research the origins. Traveller names are also worth bringing up, surprisingly common.

Yeah, I believe that my last name is a soldatnamn. Not sure tho.

Interesting to note is that surnames based on vocation or profession is as good as completely absent from Scandinavia. As a Norwegian...I don't think I can even come up with a single one. No Potter. No Smith. No Cooper. No Carpenter. No Tanner. Yet the Germans have loads of these: Doepfer, Schmidt, Fassbender, Gerber, etc.

@@jarls5890 might be because Norwegians were more rurally split apart, like, people from the middle of the thick part, didn't really interact much with people from the southern coast, so instead, Norway has a lot of very similar place names being used for surnames all over the place. Viken Aasen Lund Berg

All names are made up. And who ever asks a person's name's source?

@@jarls5890 Is they?

@@mikemondano3624 I assume you mean "are they?". Still, I am not sure what your question is!

I mean… historically Vietnam had a lot more shit to deal with and we’re probably a little more preoccupied.

Well it's already pretty convenient in Vietnam's case. Kids always have the exact same surname as their father's

Vietnamese call each other by given name, which we have plenty of, so there isn’t any needs to require new surnames.

@@schuetzer I wonder if the tendency of calling each other by given name was due to the lack of variety in surnames

@@saddasish Maybe. It's might be like a chicken and egg problem though.

hahaha vafan det är ju du!!! Leksand represent!!

@@TheLunkan22 nämen vafan kul o se dig här hahhaha

Storgården represent

Samma här, bor i Norrbotten men morsan växte upp i Dalarna och vi har kvar släktmarken där. :D

never heard of it and im Swedish

Except for Vladimir Ashkenazy.

This can funnily enough cause some oddities, I have a different surname in Iceland than I do in Sweden and I know others in the same situation.

Wait, so Icelandic people change their name from generation to generation? How does their records keep up with it?

@@Old_Harry7 That's the neat part, they don't.

@@Old_Harry7 You use the Biblical method of keeping track of who is who: keep a record of the line of fathers before you back to either Babylon or Abraham.

big Japanese surname energy right there

than anything else*

Those are really interesting. I've heard that they were part of the name reform ("so what do we call ourselves?" "I dunno, look out the window"), but I don't know for sure

The Björkforce is strong with this one.

If I remember that episode of Språket (i P1) correctly, that type of surname is rather unique to Sweden.

Thai people definitely have weird last names.

It still doesn’t prevent Thai surnames from being incredibly long when romanized into English …

@@zacharyyan4898 oh I know... mine is 14 letters long and the last 3 are silent...

@@gregoryford2532 The point of Thai surnames is they must be absolutely unique to any other registered family name. Keep in mind names were completely made up after 1918, since before nobody had surnames, so they don't go back very far. So in modern times you cannot have somebody else's surname unless you are directly related to them or married.

So every Thai just has an ID! So people could cave called themselves Dlgncsjpozgcy…

John Lastname is certainly an interesting name!

Is it Johan Andersson. No, no, wait. Anders Johansson.

But we know your first name is John, that narrows it... ...moderatly

Very interesting backstory for your name, I too have one. One of my ancestors, great-great-great-great-grandfather or something, was simply one day found in a small village. And then he adopted the name of that village as his last name. Many generations later, and I still have it as my surname. Only members of my family have that surname, so if someone has it, I’d know I’m related to them somehow.

If it’s something involving “Andrejlowicz” or a name like it, you wouldn’t necessarily be doxxing yourself. Our side was “Andrulewicz”, and we’re Kohanim whom Ashkenazized our surname. Someone who used another variant immigrated to the US through Finland or Sweden.

One thing that was very common during these name change policies (and also, immigrants at border crossings) was officials who would give you a cruel or embarrassing name, and ask for a bribe to change it to something that wouldn't get you laughed at. Bill Bryson cites the urban legend that Barry Goldwater's ancestors went through a couple border crossings, because the first official changed their name to "Piss."

@@liimlsan3 Goldwater deserved it tbh

It happens in many countries in this example in Poland where you had a German ancestor named Müller we'd simply make it Miller (read Meeler) or Muller (read Miller [not as the same as above, but in English pronunciation] or Mooller)

isn't Burak ''Beetroot''?

Retain had a lot of odd a d rude names but they seem to have disappeared. Not so many Balls about these days and no Mr Ploppy at all

A lot of people still has the son name, it is the most common name apart from nature-names. Or maybe even more common im not sure. It's either Naturenames or Son names 😂

I find it particularly interesting how a lot of Norwegian family names are just broad geographic descriptions of the location of some farm, including my own last name. It's strange that my entire family is named after a little hill in the middle of nowhere where some dude cleared a new tiny little farm long ago, and then at one point that farm name became fossilized and spread all throughout the country. Actually, I think about half the people I know have similar geographically descriptive place names as last names. Especially in rural Norway a lot of very local generic sounding place names have a corresponding family named after that place.

My grandma's family is Norwegian, And I believe her surname came from a farm too! Well, Either that, Or the farm was named after the family. It appears to be just a simple adjective (Although I don't really speak Norwegian, So I could be wrong), Which could likely be describing the farm.

Lemme guess, the name was Nighthunter?

@@rateeightx What was her surname? I’m Norwegian and might know the meaning of the name.

@@biaberg3448 The name was "Grov", From what I can tell it means Course or Rough, Although I'm not sure if that's where the surname comes from.

That is funny, Hahhaha. Thanks for sharing Edit: So I made this comment because I misread the sentence "So we're only 15 people in the entire world with this last name hahhaha." And I thought your last name was literally Hahhaha. Now I know that's not what you meant, but I'll keep the comment up so everyone can see my mistake and learn from my error.

Oh that's so funny, my great-great-grandparents also had the names Sandgren and Carlsson (though with orthographic differences).

Can’t they change it now?

@@mattybrunolucaszeneresalas9072 in Sweden with more traditional names, usually either the closest family members that could have it or people you're barely related to have to accept it. I'll give you an example - on my materal grandfather's side we have German ancestry. My mom's cousin wanted to take the German last name (that nobody had) but because it is a name used by people that are not our family in Sweden, and a sort-of fancy name in Germany (aka not common) she had to get my grandfather's and her mother's (grandpa's sister) signature to 1. Prove it was in the family 2. They said it was OK for her to use it. Sure it might be different as my paternal grandmother had that last name until she got married but I think it would be a bit of a hassle to get us all to change it. And honestly we used to joke in school that this last name was better cause we were higher up in the lists 😂

@@ACMH98 her mother was her fathers sister??

based

Isn’t it fun! Those records at the official state archive website are just so cool to look at. I bought a Swedish genealogy book in English to help decipher the forms and give research tips.

Did you come far with your research?

wow cool!

> famous person from the 600 Muhammad?

@@Banom7a No, a lot less famous. I forgot who he is but he is recorded in some history books.

in IDs the government in Saudi normally uses 4-part names for Saudi citizens; x y z surname. i know because i worked with this stuff for very long. interestingly you say: >>The government uses the most prominent and one below if needed in passports. huh, so only three parts? Arab countries that mostly do three parts for their citizens are only Syria and Lebanon.

@@JabrHawr and palestinians too if I am not mistaken. Isn't it a levantine thing?

i thought the spanish surnames meant they were descendants of spanish too . compared to neighbouring asian nations. Filpinoes look a bit mixed ( to me at least ) so i just assumed everyone had 2 or 3 spanish relatives.

Yes, about 70%, split roughly equal between existing Spanish surnames (used in Spain) and Spanish words for places, things, etc.. The book is the Catálogo Alfabético de Apellidos of 1849 - there is an online copy of it at the Filipinas Heritage Library with an English language introduction. An 'issue' prior to the book was many Filipinos used the same few surnames of Cruz (cross), Rosario (rosary), Santos (saint), Bautista (baptised), etc when they joined the Church. The book provided about 61,000 names and words to choose as a surname and was distributed. Those who had already been using Indigenous, Spanish, and Chinese surnames didn't have to choose a new surname, though I've read elsewhere that where just a few surnames were so common the locals had to prove they used the name for four generations. The Catálogo Alfabético de Apellidos does not require this, so it appears this was done by local officials on their own. Local surnames such as Calimlim and Macapagal are used by about 20% of the population. Then there are those with surnames that originate from the Arab Middle East such as Usman. Remember, a lot of the Philippines was not under Spanish control and administration. And there are two types of Chinese surnames. The old, Ming and Qing Dynasty era, immigrants who created a surname such as Cojuangco from an entire name Co Yu Hwan. The 20th century immigrants such as Henry Sy who didn't Filipinize one's surname. There are a few non-Spanish European surnames from the Spanish colonial era as well, for example Zobel and McMicking, though I recall the latter died out. With the end of the galleon trade Spain relaxed immigration restrictions in the 19th century.

​@@PHlophe There were few Spaniards living in the Philippines. In the 17th century a total of 15,600 'Spanish' soldiers arrived in the Philippines (many soldiers were from Latin America), so an average of 156 per annum. Numerically, soldiers outnumbered other Spanish migrants to the Philippines by about seven to one, so 22 other non military people arriving annually on average, many of whom were priests and friars. For example from the years 1600 to 1625, 46% of the passengers aboard the galleons to the Philippines were clergy. This dropped to 8.5% for the years 1651 to 1699. The first official census in the Philippines was published in 1878 by the colonial Spanish government. Prior to that irregular population data was gathered from tax and Church records (the Planes de almas), though the Church didn't start keeping good records of birth, mariages, baptisms and deaths until the mid 18th century. In preparation of the '78 census the gov't issued instructions to the Church in the 1850s. The '78 census yielded a count of 5,567,685 persons living in the archipelago as of 31 December 1877, but it still relied heavily in Church records, though ones that had been prepared following gov't instructions. Colonial administrators were about 5,500 people. There were fewer than 15,000 in army and half of them were Filipinos. About 3,000 were in the navy. Nearly 2000 Spanish were clergy members. Spanish settlers (not affiliated with government, the Church, and the military) were about 13,300 people, usually living in the urban areas. Manila's population was about 150,000, and there were a few other cities of 30,000. Of the foreign population (non-Spanish), about 30,000 of the 34,000 people were Chinese. It should be noted that there was also a very large transient Chinese community who traveled between China and the Philippines - this is determined by ships' passenger records. A total of about 31,000 Spanish and 4,000 European foreigners, making Europeans about 0.6% of the total population. Spain did send more troops to the Philippines in the last years of the 19th century to deal with the uprising. The 1888 census reported 5,984,727 people. Keep in mind a lot of what is present-day Philippines wasn't under the control of the Spanish. For example, the Spanish never conquered the Igorots who lived the mountains of Luzon - the Spanish tried often. The American census on 1903 (far better quantitatively and qualitatively than Spain's) shows about 4000 Spanish citizens living in the Philippines, about 22% were female - the Spanish colonial admin, military, and friars would have departed before the census. Note, there were some Spanish colonial admin who remained to work for the Americans after Spain surrendered, for example some who were employed on the Customs Office. The head of that office gained some local fame for being the last to surrender. He demanded the Americans return in large number and threaten to use force for him to agree to surrender. The large number of non-Spanish immigrants were Chinese, most often from Fujian province. They numerically outnumbered the Spanish. Chinese often married a local woman and those who could afford it had local concubines as well. I think you'll find many more Filipinos with some Chinese ancestry than Spanish. The 1903 census reports mixed-raced mestizo with Chinese ancestry numbering about 42,000 and those of European ancestry numbering about 15,500. Roughly 3:1.

Filipinos aren't Malays but both are Austronesian it's kinda like how people misunderstand the term "Germanic" with "-ic" and falsely believe that English *comes* from German

Are there any trends on switching to non-Spanish names?

That's interesting! I'm from Svenskfinland and if I recall correctly, my grandparents' generation were encouraged to change their last names or "officially come up with them", so that's what my grandma's dad did. I guess this might have been in the 30's, but I'll definitely ask for details next time we meet.

XD

That's hilarious ! 😊

think those fake names might just have been veiled insults towards whatever austrian official came to ask them for their names for the census

@@goranpersson7726 That reminds me of the WWII Polish prisoner who pretended to be named "Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz" just to thwart the Nazi officer who kept track of prisoners’ identities. Fictional or not, Polish phonology can give you a headache.

But many of those fake last names persist until today xD The joke's on us in the end xD

I love Dutch too though can't lie

@@kklein to me Dutch is a harder, coarser version of German. I love and hate it, but I must say I prefer it to English 😅

​@@bettievw really? it sounds much softer than german to me, as a german speaker

@@jurgnobs1308 that's really interesting! I love how soft the g's and ch's are in German, I feel like they are quite rough in Dutch. What makes you say Dutch is softer?

@@bettievw i guess the ch and g are a bit more coarse in dutch (less so than in swiss german though) but for instance you have more voiced consonants where german has unvoiced ones (d instead of t, b instead of p and so on) which sounds softer to german ears

"k klein?"

@@GratDuForloradeArgumentet Not a Swedish name

@@Greksallad Klein is a jewish or a german name, usually jews have it

@@GratDuForloradeArgumentet there are more Germans with the name. The only German names exclusive to Jews are those referencing trees, bushes, precious metals and gemstones. E.g. Mandelbaum, Teitelbaum, Rosenzweig, Rosensaft, Gold, Silbergeld, Rubin, Edelstein. Names like Schwartz, Klein and even Löw are pretty common among regular Germans.

@@jeandupond9605 I see. Haha precious metals and gemstones. Makes sense.

And then there are the eastern finns who had surnames for a very long time.

Very interesting! Makes me wonder if the swedish word "pojke" (boy) is actually a loan from finnish "poika" (son). Other than that, I think we have surprisingly few finnish words in the swedish language, considering our long mutual history.

@@carlkolthoff5402 it absolutely is.

@@Killybillee Nice! I had to google to find more. Pjäxa and pulka are two more that are common in swedish that comes from finnish. Other than that I don't think swedes know a lot of finnish. We know a few phrases that we've seen lots of times (Ei saa peitää, moi mukulat) and the gorgeous curses (voi vittu, saatana perkele). Most of us also can count maybe to 5 or 10.

@@carlkolthoff5402 in Finnish that same word means both boy and son.

Yeah, this was used as well in the community my granddad grew up. During his childhood (the mid-30s to mid-40s) it happened that about half the boys had either Peter as their first name or Guler as their family name like him. So they started to call him either by the alley he lived in or his "profession" of herding the goats of the community. That's why still today more people there know my family as the "Melchetipeters" (after the alley my granddad used to live). Even though I grew up about 200 kilometers away from there

I think the reason there was so many types of names was because they were less of names, and just a way to identify individuals. Like saying “Mark from accounting” or “blonde Susan”. They just called them by whatever was the most significant thing about them. So for some people it was the famous family they came from or for others it was their job.

Same further up north in Bavaria, at least in rural regions. A lot of times it is referred to as the "house name" which does make it sound a lot more fancy. Having a relatively rare surname when the farm split ~100 years ago we just were divided into the "front" and "back" until a new identity was forged. Bonus points goes for referring to a wife/widow by her husbands first name

The "Fritz" I know in Canada was born in a farmhouse in Switzerland, built.......in 1535!

Those "Vulgonamen" are also very common, especially amongst older people nowadays where I come frome, which is near the slovakian and hungarian border in Austria. Here these names often also have croatian origin since a lot of Croatians had been moved here under rule.of Maria Theresia to populate the area. :)

I'll point out it makes sense in Danish: "Værn" = Guard (as you wrote), "Ulf" = Wolf and is also still found as a first name. Edit: And of course "æ" is a Danish letter too.

As for the Dutch mentioned: "wāernen" is apparently early middle Dutch. I do not believe the "æ" was ever used in Dutch.

@@thomaseriksen6885 æ was also used in Swedish until the spelling reform of Gustav Vasa after the fall of the Kalmar Union in the 1500s. So it could be old timey, or simply trying to appear as such.

"Värn" (Guard) --- Like in "varangian" ?

So it means Werewolf?

is k klein swedish?

I mean, he could be from anywhere and just be very skilled at speaking other languages.

hes british i think

I think he's British Chinese and just knows a lot of languages?

@@deafsear7548 they use they/them pronouns btw

they talk about their relatives changing their names in this video. so definitely swedish or part swedish

Military ranks are another similar vein. Sgt Smith, Lt Jones, etc.

My university hostel had some people with the same name so some neighbours got a bit more mischievous by differentiating them based on their characteristics e.g. there were 2 Stacys; the more outspoken one was called Stace L (L for 'loud') for short & the other was called Stace N (N for 'normal'). There're also 2 Vivians, with the 1 who moved to Japan to work after graduation called Vivian Japan

Curious. Person with very Welsh name discusses Q-Goidelic names, but not those of their namesakes' ancestors (if not their own). ;) Anyway... In a similar manner to the Manx names, modern, Welsh-derived surnames are often truncated similarly. e.g. Bowen and Price are from "(m)ab Owen" and "(m)ap Rhys" where (m)ap/(m)ab is equivalent to the better known Mac, and the b is a mutation from p before a vowel. The m in "map" disappeared a long time ago; Modern Welsh doesn't use it. You might find, say, a person called Norman Price, going by "Norman ap Rhys" in Welsh language situations.

this is similar to Mac being shortened to 'ac in irish gaelic, eg Tomás 'ac Óda, Páidí 'Ac a Luain etc

It's interesting that the Picts of Hibernia/Caledonia/Alba [ currently Scotland ] used "Makk" for "son of" [or rather the Irish Og'ham writers used "Makk" on the Standing Stones, since the Picts had no known written language ] and the Welsh used "Mab" [pronounce map], which became "Ap", which further became "P" as the first letter of the last name .. but the "mac" in Ireland [ "son of" ] was mostly replaced by the O' - "grandson of" ] .. and the "daughter of" have all been basically wiped from memory .. "nik" in scotland .. "merch" [guttural "merk", similar to the ch in "Loch"] in Wales ..

My American "Hartliep" was originally "Hartlieb" in Germany [ Thuringia ] .. my father's mother was from Sweden [ a Johnson ], but my mother's family is all from Scotland, Ireland and Wales [ two of her line going all the way back to the pre-Scottish [dal riatan] Picts, and a Welshman who married an Irish Girl in Cork waiting for the Boat to America ] .. most think 'Hartlieb' was changed by the US Customs Agent hearing "Hartliep" as the pronounciation .. back about 120 years ago it split the family - half sticking with "hartliep" and the other half switching to "hartlieb" - ergo, Chuck Hartlieb is a distant cousin ..

Cool. if I search swedish searchengine you can still find that place, it's just above Olofström in southern Sweden on the country-side, in Blekinge (which is the county district).

@@GratDuForloradeArgumentet Yep. That's where they moved. My grandmother grew up in Olofström

That's definitely a better story than "my grand father picked our name from a state published list" 😂

@@TinaDanielsson Alla efternamn är ju dock påhittade - det är liksom vad ett efternamn är. Oklart vad den där sponsrade listan hade för effekt med tanke på att de flesta i Sverige har namn efter naturen eller en plats. Typ Bergkvist, Hedlund osv.

​@@GratDuForloradeArgumentet Nu vet jag inte hur du menar. Varken son-namn eller gårdsnamn är några "påhittade" efternamn. Det är namn som indikerar ett förhållande mellan en person och något annat (tex person, plats, yrke). Familjenamn/släktnamn användes redan på 1600-talet och det blev vanligare och vanligare hos adeln och borgare under senare århundraden. Soldater fick ofta så kallade soldatnamn som blev till familjenamn (tex Sköld och Svärd). De vanligare familjenamnen som vi ser idag har med andra ord haft lång tid på sig att utöka sina släkter. Namnen som togs i början på 1900-talet har bara några generationer på nacken. Därför är det svårt att se vad effekten blev av att namn på listan valdes utan att titta närmare på statistiken. Men helt klart hade det funnits många fler personer med son-namn annars idag.

Yes, as a result the modern Russian (or broader East European) naming system is somewhat hybrid of the Icelandic and Swedish systems. No connection or influence from there, of course, but similar processes lead to resembling results.

That’s were my grandfather was from, too! Our last name was job-related-Great-great-grandfather Karl, a ferryboat captain on the River Lule,, took Stor Åström, which means large river current. I’ll have to review my research to translate the non-patronymic names I’ve found.

Not so modern, at lest in English were family names were required for the Doonsday book of William the Duke of Normady, king of England, for tax records, in 1066 or there abouts.

I would argue that in this case, we have gained something through modernization. The trouble with these older naming conventions circles back to the reasons why the government insisted upon a standardized system -- inconsistency made record keeping impossible. How many names were lost a generation past the one that carried them? A consistent surname reinforces your links to the people you descend from as it makes record keeping much more consistent. Most of my ancestors have come from places with these standardized surname practices so I can easily pull a history of my ancestor stemming hundreds of years, going back to the 1400s at times. Without that, someone like me, who has no immediate ancestors from the Netherlands or Spain, would be completely unaware that a prominent branch of my ancestry must have developed out of the Dutch war for independence from Spain as a mingling of two of my ancestors happened at this time... a Spanish man and a Dutch woman. Might be a bit of a dark history, but one that at least I know because of good record keeping.

Eh, I rather like being able to change my surname, having a gender-neutral surname and being able to be named after my mother's family. And while this was government inforced, it also shows a shift in values: it doesn't matter who is your father or what your family history is, what matters is who *you* are.

Nice story! :) Just wanted to point out that "Stor"(large, big, great, burly - aka whoever first used that name was a big burly man :P) most likely is a military name and has nothing to do with his boat captain profession :)

oh so kinda like Cooper?

Because its main use is to distinguish words like "and+en" from "ande+n", and since it doesn't really exist in Germanic languages where the definite article remains a separate word before the noun, I imagine it arose precisely for the purpose of distinguishing the definite forms of nouns.

As a German myself I did this mistake often enough, hehe...

As a Swede, I made this mistake on an Italian registration document.

@@dsludge8217 IN French, the usual word for 'name' is 'nom', which on administartive documents means 'family name', the given name being 'prénom'. In Italian, 'nome' is the given name and the family name is 'cognome'. The historical reason for this confusion is that the ancient Romans (think of Marcus Tullius Cicero) had three names: praenomen, nomen and cognomen...

It's actually Johansson.

It does exist, but it's much more common with Jonsson then without the Ö. I think those names are boring as hell, because we have no cool names anymore. Well we have them still, but few have those names. Was cooler when we had a lot of scandinavian names .. like my name here Asgeir, it means Spear of the gods in old norse.

I think that was very common. One probably chose something easy for the locals to pronounce and spell. Andersson > Anderson. Svensson > Swanson. And so on. Taking the name of the port is a creative way to create a new identity, I suppose!

Indonesian Chinese meanwhile used non-Chinese surnames during Suharto's New Order gov't due to a policy of greater assimiliation of ethnic minorities (such as the Chinese there). Many took up more native-sounding surnames, some of which have become uniquely Indonesian Chinese e.g. Gunawan, Halim but some took up other ethnicities' surnames too e.g. I met some colleagues surnamed Romanoff

Only they would not have the property's name before the personal name

Not exactly that, but there exists a story of a boy called "Karlson" (firstname, not surname) that can fly since he has rotor blades on his back. He becomes friends to a boy that he takes everyhwere but he is super angry all the time and rude asks the boy "give candy or else I don't fly!" and they hide him on the roof of a building where he lives in a room since nody has to know he exists

5:44 It's in the same category.

@@_loss_ Sure, but since the specific group "nature names" makes up about 30% of all Swedish surnames it surely should have been mentioned specifically, don't you think?

@Marcus True had a brain fart.