A patronymic surname is a

surname In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community. Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...

originated from the

given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a ...

of the father or a

patrilineal Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritan ...

ancestor An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or ( recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from w ...

. Different cultures have different ways of producing patronymic surnames. For example, early patronymic

Welsh surnames Fixed surnames were adopted in Wales from the 15th century onwards. Until then, the Welsh had a patronymic naming system. History In 1292, 48 per cent of Welsh names were patronymics and, in some parishes, over 70 per cent. Other names were de ...

were the result of the Anglicizing of the historical Welsh naming system, which sometimes had included references to several generations: e.g., Llywelyn ap Gruffydd ap Morgan (Llywelyn son of Gruffydd son of Morgan), and which gave rise to the quip, "as long as a Welshman's pedigree." As an example of Anglicization, the name Llywelyn ap Gruffydd was turned into Llywelyn Gruffydds; i.e., the "ap" meaning "son of" was replaced by the

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can a ...

suffix "-s", but there are other cases like "ap Evan" being turned into "Bevan". Some Welsh surnames, such as

John John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Secon ...

or Howell, did not acquire the suffix "-s." In some other cases the suffix was affixed to the surname much later, in the 18th or 19th century. Likewise, in some cases the "ap" coalesced into the name in some form, as in Broderick (ap Rhydderch), Price (ap Rhys) and Upjohn (ap John).P. H. Reaney, ''Dictionary of English Surnames'', 3rd ed., Routledge, 1991, pp. 462, 3213.

References

Surname {{Onomastics-stub

See also

References