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The lesson I get from this is that people were less attached to their last names, and called themselves whatever they wanted.
by xattt 2y ago
The lesson I get from this is that people were less attached to their last names, and called themselves whatever they wanted.
- wileydragonfly 2y agoSomething to ponder when hearing those proud family stories…
- selcuka 2y ago> people were less attached to their last names More like people didn't have last names in the Ottoman empire, so they were usually called by their fathers' names, or nicknames. Surnames were officially started to be enforced in 1934, long after the Ottoman empire collapsed and the Rebublic of Turkey was founded.
- thfuran 2y agoThat's only like a decade after the Ottoman empire was dissolved.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI suspect that many surnames came from vocations, like "Smith," or "Zuckerman" ("Sugar-Man" -probably a candy-maker).
- aeontech 2y agoWell, consider what position you are in when someone with absolute power over your life and death grants you a new name as a sign of favor. Do you risk rejecting it and potentially endangering yourself and your entire family?
- ranit 2y agoAll surnames derived from occupations started at certain point of time. Ancestors of Tailor, Smith, Miller, Fletcher, Fisher, Cooper, etc. had different last names at certain time in past. If a change didn't occur these "occupational" names would not exist.
- edgyquant 2y agoSome are locations etc
- mkl 2y agoA change in surname is not necessary, just a transition from no surname to surname, which happened relatively recently in many places, or from explicit parentage descriptions ("X son of Y", etc.) to inherited family names.
- bluGill 2y agoMaybe. Often when families immigrated to America they tried to pick a spelling that would allow English speakers to pronounce their name close enough to what they were used to that they would understand they were being called. Sometimes the this was a different English word that had nothing to do with the meaning in the original language. (I suspect the same happens with immigrants elsewhere, but I know my family name is based on getting close to the original sound and that happens to be a word that has a different meaning in English) I don't know if the original word was a occupation back in the old world or not. (the dialect my family spoke is no longer spoken so it would be difficult to research)
- 1-more 2y ago> Often when families immigrated to America they tried to pick a spelling that would allow English speakers to pronounce their name close enough to what they were used to that they would understand they were being called. Sometimes the this was a different English word that had nothing to do with the meaning in the original language. This is also the naming process for some places in the new world like Cuernavaca in Mexico
- 1-more 2y agoPretty sure that if they're in English, it happened around the time William the Conqueror did the Domesday book, the first census of England.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
- sedatk 2y agoMaybe so, but in this specific instance, it was Ottoman Sultan Mustafa I who bestowed the last name to the cymbal-maker Avedis.