• FavouriteShapes@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      24 hours ago

      I reckon the high prevalance of the Smith surname isn’t really down to a highly smith-based economy, but because it was a quite respectable profession for both social classes - high paid, possibly self employed, talented/educated - but also useful strong and dependable. So if you have to choose between different surnames you might therefore go:

      • “ah my parent was a smith so i can be a smith too”
      • “my parent chose to use their smith parent’s surname so i will choose it too because it gets respect”

      Or, maybe smiths always needed a lot of helpers and instead of taking the surname “Prentice/Prentiss” they would just go with Smith, as it’s neater.

      Maybe those with some experience working a forge or shaping metal had more liberty to move to different towns for work; In a new town, locals who’d lived there their whole life wouldn’t need an identifying surname (assuming this is pre-surname consolidation in Britain) but the Smiths would have that as a tradename, thus advertising their services.

      Presumably also, every town needed at least one local tinkerer or metalworker - there are/were like 10,000s of distinct villages all over England. So if we presume that tradespeople always have surnames of their trade and non-tradespeople (like farm labourers) don’t usually feel a need to, The Smiths already have a greater share of the surnamed population in the census.

      Lastly, I’m guessing the smiths had a somewhat better quality of life in relation to disease and poverty. Possibly the hot forges kill off harmful bacteria and they had “middle class” income and no vulnerability to random agriculture failure, like farmers did.

      One reason why I don’t think it’s because “the king ordered loads and loads of people to become smiths during one particular war and we were left with an overabundance of Smiths” is because The high prevelance of the “Smith” surname is also observed in Germany, Spain, Poland and elsewhere. As Schmidt, Herrero and Kowalski, respectively. The more you know!

      • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
        3·
        3 days ago

        Also, a bunch of Wrights too: Cartwright, Wainwright, Shipwright, Wheelright, etc.

        Then there’s just plain occupational names: Miller, Farmer, Thatcher, and so on.

        Had this tradition continued, the information age would have given us: Chipwright, Cloudwright, Videosmith, Hacksmith, Coder, Tester, Gamer, Printer, and probably a ton more.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
          9·
          2 days ago

          I always found it fun to learn about these old timey professions that (basically) no longer exist, but still exist as names, like:

          • Cooper: a craftsman who makes barrels, casks, etc.,
          • Hooper: an assistant to the cooper. Someone who put the hoops (bands of metal or wood) around the barrels. This one is especially good because coopers took over the job of putting the bands on, so the job died off while “cooper” still existed as a job, yet there are still people with that name
          • Fuller / Walker: a person who softens and cleans wool, sometimes by walking on it, sometimes using the hands
          • Clark: this one still exists, but is spelled and pronounced differently as “clerk”.
          • Turner: someone who operated a lathe. Basically a specialized machinist.
          • Marshall: this is a fun one. Originally it had to do with horses, it was “mareshal”, but then somehow evolved to be a high officer of the court, unrelated to “martial” which sounds the same but comes from “Mars” the god of war.
          • Parker: The job exists now, but is more “park ranger” or just “ranger”
          • Baxter: Baker – but the feminine form of the word. Similarly “Webster” is the female form of “Weber” (Weaver), Brewster is the female version of Brewer, Spinster is the female form of Spinner, etc.
          • Carter: someone who moves goods with a cart
            • merc@sh.itjust.works
              1·
              21 hours ago

              “Court” I think, in this sense, was the king’s court, not a judicial court. But, I think you’re onto something about how it started as someone who took care of horses then probably evolved to being in charge of horses or something, to then being the official with the big job related to horses. I guess it’s a bit like how “secretary” can be either a person making near minimum wage who does office work, or it can be the most powerful person in the cabinet who deals with X.

    • dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de
      19·
      3 days ago

      Smiths and millers were common enough professions that basically every village had one but rare enough to be useful as a description. John the farmer would have been way too vague, leading to names that come from physical appearance, place of origin or relatives‘ given names.

    • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      3 days ago

      Smiths were generally wealthier so they had a better diet and what amounted to medical care, and they were rarely put in combat because they were needed to make weapons. So more of them survived.

      • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
        15·
        3 days ago

        [smiths] were rarely put in combat because they were needed to make weapons. So more of them survived.

        That’s how it works for my dwarves, too.

      • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        3 days ago

        People in cthe middle ages in ciities were wealthier and healthier, and free. People in the country were slaves or tools of the local lords. City air makes you free they would say, cities were filled with free people, and run by guilds generally, smiths chief amongst them. Other cities were more merchant ruled chiefly. The nobility forever looked down on commerce, everything except agriculture and war generally.

        You couldn’t just move into a city, you needed an in, like getting accepted as an apprentice in a guild.

  • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net
    57·
    3 days ago

    “Son, you come from a long line of Dontanswers. Now do your ancestors an honorable turn and impose the most annoying phone conversation in history on this near-stranger.”

  • farmgineer@nord.pubEnglish
    21·
    3 days ago

    Japanese is more like ‘bob from the long field’, ‘steve from the middle of the village’, etc. and are often place references (certain classes had more rights before people had the right to surnames, so a bit different that far back).

    • paranoia@feddit.dk
      8·
      2 days ago

      There are a lot of surnames like that in English. Westfield, Norwood, Whitmore, Blackwell, etc.

      In Danish you get some very precise locations of farms relative to villages and see names like Nordestgaard (North East Farm), Højgaard (high farm, i.e., on a hill), Bjerregaard (mountain farm)

      • farmgineer@nord.pubEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        Yep, very true. I couldn’t think of any examples when writing, but I often mention that when people talk about how cool Japanese names are “because they have (characters that have) meaning”. We have those in English, too!

  • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
    27·
    3 days ago

    I do this, too, and my best friend is in my phone by just his last name (the name he goes by), so when I added his wife to my phone when they got married, I put her in as “Name Hislastname,” in that same way of association, like you would add someone as “bill plumber,” or whatever. And I realized, wait, is this how married couples sharing a name started? Lol

  • Godric@lemmy.world
    26·
    3 days ago

    Lots of Dutch last names are ridiculous, allegedly in defiance of foreign empires forcing the people to adopt them for registration purposes.

  • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    3 days ago

    I’m a school bus driver. Our director of transportation is in my phone as “Patti Busboss”. I genuinely have no idea what her real last name is.