Last Name Question

jessegaroldjensen1

So I just put this in the discussion area by mistake, but I still need an answer so here is my question. I know that the Danish stopped using the patronymic naming system in the early to mid-1800s. However, I have an ancestor that stopped using the patronymic naming system in the mid-1770s. I know it might be a wild guess, I have never seen it before though. I would like to know why the family decided to keep the surname 50 years before it was a law. Were there common reasons families would do this? I have tried researching it but I find nothing about it.

Norm Baker

This article in the Family Search Wiki will probably answer your question: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Denmark_Personal_Names.

Gordon Collett

The wiki article briefly states that fixed surnames were used but doesn't really say by who or why. I haven't worked much in Denmark but have researched my wife's Norwegian family for years and have learned things along the way that probably apply to Denmark as well. In Norway, the patronymic system was not stopped officially stopped until the early 1900s even though unofficially it was going out of style around 1890. But a hundred or even two hundred years before that, there were people who had fixed surnames. These could be of two varieties, family names and fixed patronymics. Family names were pretty much what we consider surnames today, a fixed last name passed down from father to children without a -sen in sight. Fixed patronymics were last names that still looked like patronymics but did not change from generation to generation and were the same for males and females, for example, Hans Nilsens children, both boys and girls would all have the last name of Nilsen.

For family names, the most common reasons a family would have one are the usual suspects: Wealth and Prestige.

When you run across these, you will find money and/or high social standing. These were wealthy merchants, landowners of massive estates, aristocrats, government officials, and church hierarchy. You will also often find Wikipedia articles!

Here are a few examples:

• The Collett family (no relation of mine, just personally interesting for obvious reasons): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collett_family
• Morton Leuch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morten_Leuch
• Eiler Eilersen Hagerup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiler_Eilersen_Hagerup
• Axel Mowat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Mowat
• Baron Ludvig Rosenkrantz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Rosenkrantz

From what I have seen of fixed patronymics, these seem to be mainly among city dwelling merchants and lower level officials, the urban middle and upper middle classes. I don't know why these came to be used, whether it just was the fashion or whether is was in imitation by those without a family name of those higher classes of people that did.

You didn't mention what you ancestor's surname was, but if it was something like Bugge, Daae, Schielderup, Bull, Parelius, Prest, Schjelderup, Heiberg, Lund, Faye, Darre, Irgens, Bernhoft, Friis, Krog, or Arentz, he was likely from an important family. If it was something like Hansen, Nilsen, or Olsen, he was probably a pretty well off merchant class sort of individual.