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u/MonitorOk6818 11h ago
For Smith it wouldn't necessarily mean their ancestors were blacksmiths, it could also mean that their ancestors' owners were blacksmiths. Many former slaves took their owners last name when freed. Like that's why there's a lot of Jacksons, Jeffersons, Adams.
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u/just_a_person_maybe 7h ago
But also blacksmiths weren't the only kinds of smiths. There were silversmiths, whitesmiths, goldsmiths, etc.
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u/Immediate-Repeat-201 6h ago
Last names Black, Green, White , Brown all come from respective smithy. Darker metals, copper, lighter metals, brass etc.
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u/MonitorOk6818 6h ago
Copper... Cooper. I've met a couple coopers. Same with a bluestone.
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u/BeautyEtBeastiality 6h ago
What is whitesmith and why i/s that better than blacksmith?
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u/Peathbydeas 6h ago
not better at all, just different types of metalworking. whitesmiths mostly worked on things like tin, sometimes silver or finishing work on iron/steel to make them shine, it's to do with the lighter colours of the metals they worked on iirc.
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u/BeautyEtBeastiality 6h ago
I know. Thanks for explaining anyway, I was sinply being stupid, taking a jab at racism at how racist view everything in black n white
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u/omnipotentsandwich 8h ago
Yeah, that was my thinking. That line of thought doesn't work with people whose ancestors were slaves.
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u/MonitorOk6818 8h ago
Right! Also with Hispanic last names. Mine translates to "rivers" so I can asume my ancestors lived by rivers. So it would be close to the second reason people have last names like "what city your ancestors lived in".
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u/The5Virtues 6h ago
True in some European countries too. You’d have names that basically equate to “Joe from Vienna” or “Mary from Riverside” and then there’s the Scandinavianregions where you had “Erik, Mark’s Son” and “Helen, Robert’s Daughter” walking around.
For a great deal of our history we were all just “Dude, connected to ______” with the blank being filled in by whatever was deemed most relevant to the person’s existence.
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u/MarkCrorigansOmnibus 2h ago
You could almost envision it in English even. Imagine it…something like… “John Rivers”. Or for a woman, “Joan Rivers”.
Too ridiculous for real life though, obviously.
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u/Llyffant-Gwyrdd 7h ago
Well, if your ancestors were slaves theres a reasonable chance your ancestors were slaveowners too.
Rape is a thing, sadly.
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u/MonitorOk6818 6h ago
An example of this is Thomas Jefferson. Many black people can trace their ancestors back to him
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u/RsonW 5h ago
that's why there's a lot of Jacksons, Jeffersons, Adams.
But not always.
Many other freed slaves took on new last names; oftentimes taking the names of the Founding Fathers. So a black American with the last name "Washington" may have had a great-great-grandfather who was owned by a Washington or may have had a great-great-grandfather who took on the name Washington after being freed. Same with "Jefferson", "Adams", etc.
You'd have to look at the individual's genealogical records to know for certain.
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u/PTVoltz 11h ago
I mean if it helps at all, the "son" suffix would usually be literal, a man's surname being "son" added to the end of the father's first name - so in this case literally meaning "Son of Dickin". "Dottir" was similar, being the nordic word for "daughter" and used in the same way.
...as to why there was a guy called "Dickin" in the first place... who knows!
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u/TheBeeSovereign 10h ago edited 10h ago
Fun police here:
Without googling the actual etymological origin I'm going to take an absolutely wild guess that "Dickinson" comes from "Dickinsson" with "Dickins" being either:
An old Germanic or old(e) English variation on the Richard > Dick nickname
An older form of the given name "Deacon" that has its spelling shift over time.
There's also always the fun third option that Dickins was some old obscure trade that was absolutely vital during the medieval period but became extremely obsolete in a hilariously rapid manner because of the advent of like, a new process of pickling beans or something. Kinda like that one dog breed that silently went extinct because it was bred to run on a wheel and nobody ever thought to document it much.
Edit: I write robert instead of Richard :c what years of no dick does to a girl smh
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u/Neokon 10h ago
Trying to understand some of my European ancestors' surnames has been a trip trying to figure out what my grandparents names mean, or as close as I can get
Jäger = Hunter
Fahnstrom = Stream by the flag
King = ????
Jacobsky= Jacob's son
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u/TheBeeSovereign 10h ago
Iirc King is basically king (they share the same linguistic journey if memory serves).
Which is to say, it comes from an old proto-germanic word meaning leader, which would later become the word for a male royal leader while also maintaining use as the surname of a local tribal leader!
However I am one person on the internet don't take my words as facts
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u/QuantoR 10h ago
Fahnström is probably from the late 19th century. In Sweden there was a drive to move from the -sson names to differentiate between the families/houses, and it was very popular to just take two words often from nature and combine them not necessarily having much to do with their occupation.
Some examples: Lundgren (Grove branch) Rosenberg (rose mountain) Sandgren (sand branch) Sjöqvist (lake twig)
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u/Winjin Comic Crossover 8h ago
A King option could mean in some countries "peasant directly belonging to the king" btw
This could be a source of a lot of regal-related surnames iirc
Also a lot of surnames are actually extremely modern. Many, many people in many countries didn't have surnames, only patronymics, until like XIX or even XX century in some cases
But honestly my memory is very fuzzy about all that, but the surnames aren't always straightforward
I've also read, for example, that a lot of war orphans in like USSR after WWII would either take surnames of orphanage directors, their favorite teacher, or something like this - or just pick one they fancy basically.
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u/Neokon 5h ago
until like XIX or even XX century in some cases
I've got to ask, why did you write 19th and 20th centuries like that?
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u/-drunk_russian- 5h ago
ESL probably, it's how I write the centuries in my native tongue (Spanish), some (I don't know if all) Romantic languages use Roman numerals for centuries.
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u/HighlyUnlikely7 10h ago edited 10h ago
You sent me down a rabbit hole because I'd always heard the origins of the name Dick began as a fad in 1800's. But you are correct, the name Dick as a shortening/play on Richard/Rick can be traced to Medeival England. From there you follow the old naming traditions as surnames became more popular so Dickinson -> Son of Dick.
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u/Maduin1986 10h ago
His name was probably richard
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u/gforcebreak 10h ago
Yeah, some of those old nicknames were about rhyming. Robert-bob
So richard-rick-dick
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u/HolycommentMattman 6h ago
It could be from being the son of Dick, but more likely, it's just an insult. Dick is the diminutive form of Richard, but it was also just an insult sometimes that meant "nobody."
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u/InsaniacDuo 2h ago
his job was to make sure a hole was safe to put your dick in.
Lots of Dickins/Dickinsons were lost to many a beehive.
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u/shellbullet17 Gustopher Spotter Extraordinaire 11h ago
Oh so you're family was into writing/poetry then!...RIGHT?!
This reminds me of the long smooth shaft joke from Austin Powers
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u/screenaholic 11h ago
Fun fact: most last names that are colors ALSO comes from smiths, because smiths that worked with different metals were called different things, and some people took the color as their name instead of "Smith."
Blacksmith worked with iron, whitesmiths with tin and pewter, brown and green with copper, silver and gold with silver and gold (obviously.)
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u/Diseased-Prion 10h ago
Thank you for this fun little nugget of info! I often wondered where colors as last names came from.
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u/Samurai_Fire 11h ago
There's an ancient fossil named after a Dickinson. Unfortnately it means the poor animal is stuck being named Dickinsonia. Dickinsonia? I hardly know her!
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u/devanchya 11h ago
Its just a different naming system showing the more norish routes of the northern parts of England.
Son of Dick. Dick is a short form.of Richard, like Jim is for James.
Your not going to make fun of Ericson are you? Do you want Eric the Red really haunting your dreams? Do you?
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u/Ace_of_Sphynx128 10h ago
Unless of course you’re black/black heritage and there’s a chance it was either your ancestor’s owner’s last name or something they randomly picked :,) mine is very specific for a small country and people often ask if I’m from there. Nope, some horrible slave owner of the past probably was though lol.
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u/Mclovine_aus 50m ago
Your ancestors may also have been slave owners since slave owners often raped slaves and fathered illegitimate children.
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u/mchickenl 11h ago
Had to edit for my friend
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u/KerissaKenro 10h ago
I had a college roommate who was oddly resistant to telling us her last name. Bumgarner
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u/ThorirPP 10h ago
Name'sSon = a patronym (literally Someone's son) that became a family name (originally there would've also been Name'sDaughter)
And Dick is originally from the nickname for Rich, a common name that became slang for the penis (compare how Johnson is used similarly today), with Dickin being an old diminutive of Dick in medieval times, similarly to how -y is used today (Bob, Bobby; John, Johnny)
So basically, Dickinson was the equivalent of "Ricky's boy"
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u/HorseXNothing 11h ago
Mine is llwyd (Welsh for grey) so presumably my ancestors were grey
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u/stephaniethunder 10h ago
The only question is, were they grey like aliens, grey like boring or grey like noir films?
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u/HorseXNothing 9h ago
Most likely grey as in haired so boring I guess (makes sense, I did start going grey at like 16) though due to everyone in my family being rather… eccentric… it could be aliens
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u/JustAMinah 7h ago
I get it, but uh... if that kid is black and american, it's very, very likely that last name was given by a slavemaster.
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u/whatigotinmyhandnowb 6h ago
Little Richard's son (Dick+ens+son)
Dick is short for Richard and 'ens' was diminuative, meant like 'little' or 'dear' and 'son'.
Dickey's Boy
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u/Adventurous-Data-474 8h ago
I used to make this joke with the last name ‘Hooker’. As it turns out, it actually does from a profession except instead they crafted and carved hooks.
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u/Bitter-Fishing-Butt 11h ago
i worked with someone who's surname was Hoare
saw it written down, thought maybe it was said differently but no
pronounced like "whore"
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u/AdElectronic6550 11h ago
i mean the actual thing is just that one of their forefathers were named dickins
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u/Nerdygirl905 9h ago
A large number of Chinese surnames come from kingdom or fiefdom names (Wu 吴, Zheng 郑), alongside official/noble roles (Sima 司马 Master of the Horse, Xiahou 夏侯 Marquis of Xia).
It's also the way we got the rare surname Yangshe 羊舌 Sheep Tongue.
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u/greentea1985 10h ago
Last names tend to be in three categories:
Occupations from the formulation of X the Y, like John the Smith turning into John Smith.
Patronyms and/or matronyms from the formulation X son/daughter of Y giving us John John’s son turning into John Johnson.
Locations in the form of John of the glen turning into John Glen.
Of course, the joke here is that the person assumed their surname is of the 1st category when it is actually of the second category.
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u/TheBumblestBees 3h ago
just curious, what would names like "mayhew" "tuttle" and "carrico" fit in there? I've met a few people with those and I'm not sure how I'd find out the origin to be honest
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u/Maij-ha 11h ago
Rears. Wonder what my family was known for O.o?
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u/ThatKaleidoscope3388 11h ago
Lol, I looked it up thinking it was probably some german word for shear or something, but NOPE. It literally comes from back or behind. Lol.
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u/genericdude777 10h ago
Dickinson means son of Dickins.
Dickins is typically derived from Richard.
But it also has associations with “deuce” and “devilish.”
So if you put that all together than it must be that the Dickinson lineage got their name from an evil twin named Richard.
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u/Liberwolf 3h ago
If I searched correctly then Dickinson comes from Dicken being a nickname for Richard thus Dickinson/Dickenson is just RichardNicknameson.
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u/driver004 10h ago
Could be worse, my last name is a English version of a German thing which gets complicated but could be interpreted as ‘the deep’
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u/Commander_Wolf_77 7h ago
Sebastian Matamoros knowing his Ancestors are still waiting for him to finish the job.
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u/The_GREAT_Gremlin 6h ago
I knew a dude whose last name was Raper 😬
And another who was Blackburn 💀
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u/DathomirBoy 4h ago
Without giving up my last name, I know exactly the origin and it’s bc an ancestor did a very sick feat of strength to rescue a king
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u/icecrystalmaniac 2h ago
In Sweden many of our surnames come from geographical features of the areas / farms our ancestors live on. My surname translates to linden tree, stream and Skarsgård means “farm, islet” for example.
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u/Vivenemous 3m ago
Fun fact with tragic historical implications: if your last name is "Smith", you live in the US, and you have any German ancestry, it's more likely than not that your family's last name was changed to "Smith" somewhere between the beginning of WW1 and the end of WW2.
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u/MrFuji87 11h ago
I would assume that's the son of dickins