61
Why don't given names vary more per region?
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
61 points (93.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43369 readers
1993 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Because given names used to be pretty much unique in each village and you wouldn’t travel much, that’s why only nobility had surnames and regular people didn’t. There’s no need to differentiate which Chris you mean if there’s only one Chris in the village.
They absolutely had people with the same name in the same village. But they had nicknames, and this is also where a lot of family names come from.
Limpy Chris, Chris the smith, Lying Chris, small Chris, Brad's son Chris etc.
Also, countries (at least in Europe) didn't really keep track of people but churches did. You couldn't give someone a name that the village priest refused to baptise them as (I hope that's the proper English name for it).