Surname this may sound stupid.?

There is no such thing as a family crest. A crest is merely part of a coat of arms. Coats of arms do not belong to surnames and actually they don't belong to families, an exception might be Poland where they belong to dynastic familes and maybe France.

If you found a picture on a website or some peddler selling photos of coats of arms at your local shopping mall, what you are looking at is a coat of arms that belongs to one man and one man alone that just happens to have the same surname as yours, pure and simple.

The surname product business is a scam. Not too long ago there was an ad running on TV for a company selling framed surname histories which is rather shady as not everyone with the same surname has the same family history. The man in the ad stated "a" coat of arms will be on it, not "your" coat of arms. You see on TV the FCC can slap a company hard for fraudulent advertising. The FCC has no control over the internet of some merchant in your locall shopping mall or airport selling them like they belong to everyone with the same surname.

In Europe they were started during the last millennium. They were based on a)being the son of someone b)their occupation c)where they lived d)some characteristic about them. When they got through 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 surname with others with no known relationship. They weren't started so much to identify a man as a member of a family but for taxation purposes. Too many Joes, Sams, Henrys, Georges, Johns in the same town or village and they had to have a way of telling them apart.

In England most had one by the end of the 14th century. Still it was a couple of more centuries, in many cases, before the same surname was passed down to subsequent generations.

In the Netherlands it wasn't until the reign of Napoleon that the Dutch had surnames. They didn't think they would be permanent and as a result gave themselves funny and sometimes downright obnoxious names. The joke turned out to be on them when they found out they would be permanent.

Here are some examples from Wikipedia.

History of Dutch surnames

Surnames were not required until 1811 when emperor Napoleon had annexed the Netherlands.[2] Since many Dutch people thought this convention would only be temporary, some deliberately chose confusing or comical names. For example:

Dutch surname Explanation English

De Keizer probably a wordplay on Napoleon when people came to register their name; Who are you? I'm the emperor.[citation needed] Lit. "emperor".

Rotmensen rot, adjective meaning "rotten" + mensen "people"[citation needed] Lit. "rotten people".

Poepjes poep, noun meaning "poo/feces", + jes plural diminutive[citation needed] Lit. "excrement; poopie".

Piest piest, third-person singular form of the verb piesen meaning "to urinate/to piss"[citation needed] (He/She/It) "pisses/urinates"

Naaktgeboren naakt, adjective meaning "naked", + geboren meaning "born"[citation needed] Lit. "born naked"

Zeldenthuis zelden, adverb meaning "seldom", + thuis meaning "at home"[citation needed] Lit. "seldom at home"

17 hours ago - Edit - Delete

http://genealogy.about.com/od/surnames/a/surname_m...

this goes into some of how last names came to be. One misconception... example, if a person was a blacksmith, and took his name from that ... then it stands to reason that ALL Smiths were not necessarily from the same man. That means that all Smiths are not related, and this is true for many names. For other names, if relatively recent (ie came to the US from elsewhere, the name got changed to something unique), then it might be fact that you are related. You have to take each line and ancestor separately.

Family crests play into the idea that all persons are related with a same name. Not true... and coats of arms were given to individuals.. not families, not surnames. You can't get hung up on those because it probably does not "relate" or belong to you. Of course..vendors who make a living off this, are not going to be upfront on that part of it.

You can prove who you are REALLY related to with genealogy, meaning the process is to identify your family/ ancestors, by using valid records. Your birth cert is just an easy example to explain that. But finding FAMILY is not the same as where your name comes from.

The history of surnames in family lines are many and varied, depending upon what kind of surname it was, and when and where it was adopted.

One name I research is a place name, named after a specific meadow in England. Every one with this surname appears to be able to trace their lineage back to this area. It is first documented in the 1300's.

Many other surnames in my lineage were adopted wholesale by my Dutch ancestors in New Netherland when it was taken by the English in the late 1600's, who insisted on a standard surname convention. Entire families picked out the same surname and started using it. This change from patronymics to English style is fortunately well documented.

Still others are last names that were changed when families immigrated and wanted to fit in better. This is most common for American surnames, or surnames in Europe back when spelling was phonetic and non-standard.

I also have a ton of family lines who are brick-walled, or who have very common names (White, Smith, Duffy).

No doubt most of us have a mix of such situations in our families histories.

Have a blast.

The convention of having a surname is fairly standard among English speaking countries; however, the custom has had a checkered history. The Romans had an elaborate naming system to identify who belonged to which family, they used "given name + clan-name + family name" about 300 BC; the system disappeared when the Empire fell, and by the fourth century AD there was rarely a middle or last name to be found outside the noble classes. Single names worked as well as can be expected for the next six hundred years. The practice of attaching a word to help identify a man was resurrected in Venice and spread first to France, then England, then Germany; then to the rest of Europe. The methods by which a person adopted a surname were varied.

The Chinese were the first to adopt surnames to honor their forebears, with the family name placed first, rather than last. Thus, the family name of Sun Yat-sen is Sun. Surnames that describe a man by his relatives are only one of the several categories of surnames.

When communities consisted of just a few people, surnames weren't so important. But as each town acquired more and more Johns and Marys, the need was established for a way to identify each from the other. In the English-speaking part of the world, the exact date that surnames began to be adopted can not be pinpointed. The Domesday Book compiled by William the Conqueror required surnames, but hereditary surnames are not considered to have been commonplace until the late 1200's.

William Camden wrote in Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine:(1586)

About the yeare of our Lord 1000...surnames began to be taken up in France, and in England about the time of the Conquest, or else a very little before, under King Edward the Confessor, who was all Frenchified...but the French and wee termed them Surnames, not because they are the names of the sire, or the father, but because they are super added to Christian names as the Spanish called them Renombres, as Renames.

Adapted from SMITH Elsdon C. 1969, American Surnames, Baltimore: http://www.users.on.net/~ntrod/family_surnames.htm

Now, as for YOUR family name, how far you are able to trace it will depend on a factors that are yet unknown and no one has control over, like if you ancestor left a will or was in a war and has a service record, or maybe a court case will lend some clues...these are just types of documents that help prove relationships with ancestors.

Finally about that Coat of Arms you were admiring except for a few cases, there is really no such thing as a catch-all "coat of arms" for a surname. BUT, you will find literally hundreds of web sites on the Internet that will tell you otherwise. In actuality, "coats of arms" are usually granted only to a single person ... and NOT to an entire family or to a particular surname. Coats of arms are inheritable property, and they generally descend to male lineal descendants of the original arms grantee. So, you will know if you inherited a "coat of arms" ... because if you did, you'll already have it! The caveat to this paragraph is that "rules" and traditions regarding Coats of Arms vary from country to country. So, be certain to research the heraldry traditions of your ancestor's home country.

There are many links to articles about Coats of Arms and heraldry, at Kimberly Powell's About.com genealogy site.

The family crest is typically a figure and generally a beast of some kind. It can be found "atop the helmet placed above the shield." Traditionally the crest has been used primarily by men. However, some queens of England of Britain have been treated with crests. In the early history of the family crest, its issuance was usually confined to people of rank, but later the crest was included in nearly every grant of arms.

http://www.progenealogists.com/coatofarms.html

Surnames originated as ways to differentiated people with the same first names. Often they were the either what work the person did or where they were from. For example, Baker, Butler, Fletcher and da Vinci for Leonardo from Vinci. Also, they were changed from language to language and over time morphed into the various surnames we have today.

I don't think it's a stupid question at all. It's actually a very interesting question.

Surnames are a comparatively young historical development. The Chinese were pretty much the "early adopters," and began using surnames about 5000 years ago. In Europe, surnames weren't used until the 10th or 11th centuries AD in Venice. Gradually throughout Europe, all nobility and gentry adopted surnames until eventually surnames were used by all Europeans of all classes. The use of surnames came about primarily due to the need to be able to legally distinguish between people of the same first name. As populations increased, you might can imagine the difficulty, when half the people in your town are named John, and one of the John's commits murder, it gets kind of cumbersome for the authorities to bring in EVERY John, or to call to court, "John, the black-haired, blue-eyed, six foot tall, son of John and Emma, the one that sometimes sleeps on the banks of the millpond," only to find that they still have six or seven to choose from.

When surnames were first used, they were usually derived from one of the following sources:

Patronyms - The first name of the father. Now John Johnson (or John, son of John) could now be distinguished from John Jameson (or John son of James).

Locality - This allowed for the separation of John Kirkpatrick (who lived near the "kirk" or church of St. Patrick) from John Ashley (who lived near the grove of ash trees), as well as from all the John's who took their father's names for surnames.

Occupation - So they could also separate John Cooper (a cooper is one who makes barrels) and John Smith (the blacksmith).

Nickname describing personal or personality traits- For identifying all those strong-armed John's (John Armstrong) and sun baked John's (John Reid, which means John who has a red complexion)

Some combination of the factors already mentioned - For instance, if there was already a John Johnson in your town, but his father was John the barrel maker, while your father was John the blacksmith, you might choose to take on the surname John Smithson, because you are John, son of the smith (who is also named John).

Over time, the surnames have changed and grown, sometimes due to differences in regional dialect or clerical errors (or deliberate changes) on immigration papers. Many immigrants at Ellis Island apparently saw their surnames changed in order to make them easier for native English speakers to spell or pronounce. Johnson can now be spelled Jonson, Johnstone, Jansen, Jensen, and probably many other ways, but it all goes back to some guy, somewhere in history deciding that for legal purposes he would be John son of (that other) John.

Bailey is a cute name. Don't care for Howell as a middle name, though. It almost sounds like someones last name that is being used as a middle name. :)