What's in a name? Origins can offer a lot of family history

Have you ever wondered when and where your last name came from? Who was the first ancestor to show by that surname? It is exciting to discover how your own surname came about. In doing genealogy, one can begin with searching a surname of an ancestor and find some history about that family group.

Babenhuserheide, Swift, Mangum, Bartholomew, Ziegler, Greene, Hyatt, Pendleton, Bangerter, Greybird, Soderstrom, Verishnikoff and the list goes on. I could almost make a song out of different names I have researched! Some are usual, others may be unusual.

Two brothers came from Greece to America, one landing in Illinois, the other in Virginia. One immigration judge changed one name to Daicov from Daikopoulos; the other judge changed the other brother's name to an entirely different name.

Other surnames came from specific locations. Berling, for example, comes from the name of a parish in Sweden named Baling. Over time, the surname was changed to Berling. One ancestor originally had the Swedish surname Pehrsson. Because he joined the army, he was required to take on the surname of Baling which was the parish he was living in. Doing this makes the surname unique, because it changes the pattern of the Swedish surnames where the child's surname is taken from the father's first name, i.c. Peter's son became Peterson.

McArthur and MacDonald are examples of Gaelic names. Mc and Mac are prefixes meaning Mc son of Arthur and Mac as son of Donald. This is the case with some Scottish and Irish clans.

You may find an ancestor on your family tree that had a particular occupation and took it on as their surname. Cooper may have come from a coppersmith, Cartwright from a cart maker, and Naylor from a nail maker.

Other ancestors in England may have been named more generally such as Lake, Rivers, Woods or Hill. I heard about an ancestor called Martin-in-the-Woods because he lived in a wooded area. According to one of his descendants, his son took on the surname of Woods.

The surnames of Stewart, Knight and Earl may have come when an ancestor actually held a rank of nobility, where Prince and King probably came from royalty.

Spellings of names evolved over time in different places. The surname White for example, generally originated in England. At different times it was spelled as Whytte, Witt or Whitt. These changes are known as "name transpositions," like in music, sometimes a song is transposed into another key.

Other surnames were Americanized when ancestors arrived in the United States. Immigrants were anxious in some cases to change the spelling of their last name as they would tend to fit better in society. Similar cases may have taken generations before the foreign spelling was changed and certain letters were dropped. For example Mueller to Miller, Rothlisberger to Roth.

Names are most interesting to research! Sometimes we can learn what the country of origin may be by the surname. Exceptions to this can include a name change due to persecution, buying up land, adoptions of common law or sometimes for no reason at all.

While researching a family line, I came upon a surprise showing her great-grandfather's name. I found in the records where he was christened as Heinrich Diethler. This was a young man in Germany who was trying to flee to the American Colonies. He changed his full name to Johannes Friermood. By so doing, Heinrich wrote his first and last names to be the same as his god-father. When he signed the immigration register, it allowed him to bypass immigration police who were on the lookout. Before you knew it, he was on a ship bound for the colonies.

Do you have interesting names on your family tree? It is exhilarating to discover how you came by your last name. If you are curious about a family name you can go to the Mormon Family History Library where they have books on family surnames. These books have interesting facts such as the meaning and origin of hundreds of names. You may even find a coat of arms for you family name.

Researching your name will help you understand your heritage and fill the hunger you have to know who you are and where you came from.

Russell Bangerter, president of Ancestral Connections Inc., graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in family history/genealogy. After an LDS mission to Scotland, he served 10 years in the U.S. Army Reserve and Idaho National Guard as chaplain's assistant, where he worked with records.

Bangerter researches professionally, writes and compiles family history books, and enjoys lecturing on the subject. He can be contacted at www.ancestralconnect.com or 801-254-9023. He and his wife reside in South Jordan, Utah.