I found a bunch of different sources saying that just because you may share the same last name as someone it doesn't mean you are related. This makes sense except for the fact that these sites used sample last names that are quite common like Smith. My last name i consider to be quite uncommon but i guess i really dont know. I typed my last name on this site and found Maag (my last name) in a number of places, most cases in Germany but found there was a Maag from Algeria and France. Is it likely i am related to these people? Because i think that would be awesome! thanks for your help
You are NOT related to everyone with the same last name....regardless of if it is Smith or not.......... if you read how surnames originated it is easy to understand why we are not related to everyone of the same last name http://familytimeline.webs.com/originsofsurnames.htm
Even in the same village different families ended up with th same surname....surnames were given/chosen like first names are now, so it would be like asking if my name is Harry am I related to all Harry's...what about the Harry's in he town near where I live, or the ones who live in the same street? NO and you will be laughing at that............ its the same thing....... I researched in a village which one line of my family are from...still there and have been there from before any written village records began........ so pre 1400 there were 3 separate families of the same surname and I was convinced somewhere down the line I would connect them.... but no one family moved into the village in the 1800s from elsewhere and in resarching the other family back their surname spelling changed to the same spelling ( we hold surname spelling precious now, it wasn't then) but they are not related in any way.............
You may be related to someone with the same surname, but it is not guaranteed. The more uncommon the name is, the more likely it is. We use common examples to illustrate, but the principles apply to nearly all names. Maag is not as common as say Smith, but it's not exactly rare. The only way to prove a relation is to do the research one generation at a time, one person at a time and connect the 2 people via records (or DNA, which would not necessarily prove that the relation follows the same path as the surname).
1. When surnames were first adopted in Europe they identified an individual by one of 4 features: occupation (Smith), where they lived (Hill), description (White), or their father's given name (Johnson). It wasn't until later that they identified a family. There was more than one blacksmith, hill, guy with white hair, and son of John in a given village, let alone in all of a language area and Europe. Maag is a descriptive surname that derives from a word meaning "kinsman" in Middle Dutch and Middle High German. There was likely more than one family that would be called this.
2. Surnames are words and can originate independently in more than one place. The classic example is Lee (English and Chinese). Having the word Maag derive from 2 dialects is an indicator that it originated in 2 places independently and the originators were likely unrelated.
3. People take on surnames from other cultures. This is particularly true of European surnames in places that were once under colonial or imperial rule and among slaves.
4. Surnames can change over time. It is not uncommon for a surname to take on a local flavor. For example, a Mack of Scottish ancestry may become a Maag if he lived in a predominately German or Dutch region. Sometimes this is intentional to fit in, but more often it's a simple matter of pronunciation.
For a bit more history: the region that speaks Middle High German is near modern-day Switzerland and France. France was the imperial power in Algeria. This makes it likely that a Maag moved from this area to Algeria, but it also means that an Algerian could have taken on the name from someone he knew or knew of.
Hereditary surnames developed individually of each other and at different points of time in different countries.
The English were early in adopting hereditary surnames, that being nearly 1000 years ago. By contrast, the Netherlands only adopted hereditary surnames 190 years ago. Some "countries" such as Italy and Germany were a region of independent countries until their unification in the late 1800s. Countries further east in Central Europe, such as Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc, have come and gone from the map of Europe more times than I can count. Their naming traditions changed everytime they were invaded, partitioned, etc and someone else started imposing new rules on names.
For all of these reasons, though you think your surname is rather unique, it's a relative term. As Joyce adeptly pointed out, the name comes from several unrelated countries in Europe and comes from a term for "relative". It would be "POSSIBLE" for everyone to be relatives of each other, but it's less possible to everyone in a certain family would spread throughout Europe without the name changing a bit, especially if it has both High German and Low German roots at the same time.
When surnames were taken in Europe during the last millennium it wasn't impossible for legitimate sons of the same man to wind up with a different surname and still each could have shared his with others with no known relationship. The purpose was not to identify a man as a member of a family but just to better identify him, frequently for taxation purposes. Too many men with the same given name in the same town or village and they had to have a way of sorting them out.
They were based on
a) being the son of some. Men named William, their sons might have taken the name Williams, Williamson, Wilson, Wills etc and some of their sons might have taken the name of their occupation.
b) occupational names - Baker, Taylor, Clark(clerk), Miller,Fisher, Wright(wheelwright), Smith(blacksmith etc) Barber, Carpenter and the list goes on.
c) where they lived - Sam that lived on a hill became Sam Hill, but he wasn't the only person living on or near a hill that took the name Hill. I have Overton in my family which simply means "over town or settlement." Can you imagine how many men living over a town became Overton. Some times they took the name of city they lived in or near.
d) descriptive name - Short, Small, Long, Sharp, Fairchild. Usually Black, Brown and White indicated the color of hair.
Now your chances of being related to someone with the same surname increases if the name is rare, but what might seem to be a rare name to you might turn out to be very common some place else, another part of the country or even in another country. For instance before we had large Vietnamese immigration if someone in the U.S. was named Nguyen, Americans would have viewed it as rare but it is about the most common Vietnamese surname there is.