Question: EVOlution

You'll have to define organized society.

I think it's safe to say we were pack animals with social structure before our brains, vocal chords and hands evolved into anything like what they are today.

Present humankind's (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) immediate progenitor, Homo Sapiens, appeared some 200,000 years ago, a development of Homo Erectus. Civilization, organized socio-cultural structure centered on agriculture, animal husbandry, the localized building of permanent structures allied with those practices, dwellings, mercantile facilities, and with religio-administrative functions and defensive capability began to appear some 8 to 10,000 years ago. There were humans nearly 200 millenia before there were cities.

OH I see. I was having trouble picturing the transition from the homo erectus to the homo sapien farmes. So from here out, how were last names derived? Is it also possible for everyone human on earth to be related to eachother?

Timber's hit most of the high points. If by "the first known humans" you mean people essentially indistinguishable from us, that is indeed around 200,000 years ago. If you mean something more like the first creatures probably in our line of ancestry, and different from the lineages that led to gorillas and chimpanzees, you can look back to around 4,000,000 years ago, to the first upright, bipedal hominid, with a brain little bigger than a chimp's, but a posture and stride much more like modern humans than brachiating or knuckle-walking apes. Many feel that walking upright and freeing the hands for other uses was the first great step in the evolution of humanity. Our ancestors were using and making tools at least half a million years ago (tho probably quite a bit before that, considering chimps and bonobos, and indeed several other non-primate species, use very simple kinds of tools today).


What seem to have been quite complex symbolic systems probably developed by 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, judging from cave art. Technology developed to the point where humans could live in inhospitable ice age habitats by the same time. Music may date back to around 45000 years ago--what look like bone flutes have been found in Neandertha sites (Neanderthals were probably our cousins, rather than in our direct line of descent).

Evidence of sites possibly containing 100 people or somewhat more, date to around 15 or 20,000 years ago, and Siberian sites with multiple large house structures made up of huge numbers of intricately connected mastodon bones, which would have take a fairly large group of people to gather and construct have been found.

Permanent dwelling sites in particularly rich environments seem to predate the development of agriculture and domestication by a few thousand years.

That grouping Timber summarizes above, leading to the first permanent villages/towns, was roughly 10K years ago. Jericho has been continuously settled since then. Catal Huyuk in Turkey is another very early one, with what looks like early buildings which had some sort of religious function.

The first really urban and state structure developed around 3000-3200 BCE, in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

So you've got a range of dates to choose from here, depending on what you consider the first humans and what you consider organized human society. You'll have to give us some definitions of what you mean. But there was certainly a wide gap between whenever the first human point was and when we developed beyond an extended family/small band structure.

Evidence suggests the beginning of humankind's shift from hunter-gatherer culture to agriculture-based culture may date to as early as 15,000 years ago, give or take a millenium, proceeding gradually, coming into full flower some 8 to 10,000 years ago, in what today we call "The Fertile Crescent".

For more detailed overview pertaining to the development and ancestry of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, see The Long Timeline

As for the question of "last names,"--family or clan names were long known in some cultures, such as the Japanese, who have paid close attention to such matters for as long as they can collectively remember as a society. But not necessarily everyone in the society would have had a clan name--many peasants would have been considered beneath notice, no one would have cared if they had a "last name" or not. (Incidentally, the Japanese, as is the case with many cultures, name the clan first--so that Imagawa Yoshimoto was the father of Imagawa Ujizane, the clan name being the most significant part of the name.) The same is true of the Chinese, with the caveat that the number of clans who considered themselves important enough to distinguished from the general population was far smaller than among the Japanese. Additionally, farmers occupy a position of respect in Japanese society which is not accorded to them in other societies--the concept of "peasant" was not the same, nor so broadly applied among the Japanese as in Chinese or European societies, or worse, among the Hindi, or in Muslim societies, in which nearly everyone who did not have governing authority was viewed as a peasant beneath comtempt.

In European socities, "last names" usually only came with substantial property. They were often referential to the metier of the person referred to, as well. Therefore, the great royal family of Scotland and England, the Stuarts, were in fact, once the stewards to the Scots monarchy. A French family with the exclusive right to provide fish and roe to the King's table called themselves Le Stourgeon. It was only at the period when colonization became common that last names were fixed to any significant number of the general population, though. In manor court records, John who ran the grist mill becomes John Miller--but if his son takes up treating wool cloth after weaving and before cutting, and that son's name if Dick, everyone will call him Dick Fuller.

When in the mid-seventeenth century, someone in England decided that lots of carpenters would be needed in the new North American coastal colony which would become North Carolina, they sent a boatload over. The common English term for a carpenter (not otherwise classified) is wright. So the boat landed at what is now Wrightsville Beach--if you go to the Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, you'll see that nearly everyone on board was named "Wright"--they all must have been general carpenters, rather than, say, a cartwright (maker of carts) or a wainwright (maker of larger, four-wheeled wagons).

When people such as that began to appear on tax rolls as property owners and voters, though, the names tended to get fixed. In such a case, James Wright's son Bill, even if he took up barrel making, would not be called Bill Cooper, he'd be called Bill Wright, because his attachment to James Wright's property had become significant.

"Last Names" for common people in European societies have only become important and widely used at the beginning of the modern age--after about 1450.

Heck, I'm still working on acquiring a last name.

You're such a blythe spirit . . . i've a good idea for one . . .

And in answer to crayon's second question: yes, we're all related to each other, every one of the six billion or so of us, and fairly closely too. The genetic variability of humans is small, compared to many other mammalian species, which means we're pretty closely related. The minor differences that have been used to separate us, chiefly skin color, have essentially zero effect genetically.
There;s some controversy, but the research suggests we all came from a fairly small breeding population (less than 10,000) living in Africa between 150K and 200K years ago.

And in answer to crayon's second question: yes, we're all related to each other, every one of the six billion or so of us, and fairly closely too. The genetic variability of humans is small, compared to many other mammalian species, which means we're pretty closely related. The minor differences that have been used to separate us, chiefly skin color, have essentially zero effect genetically.
There;s some controversy, but the research suggests we all came from a fairly small breeding population (less than 10,000) living in Africa between 150K and 200K years ago. read "mitochondrial Eve" at www.wikipedia.com

sorry for the double post, I forgot the cite at the end, and thought I'd stopped it and made the addition before it posted. My reflexes weren't fast enough.

There were also, occasionally, people added to the tax rolls who were, shall we say, less than beloved by the rest of society, and were given less than desirable names, hence the Jewish name Katzenellenbogen (with derivatives like Katz, Kay, Kaye, Katzen, Ellen, Ellenbogen and Bogen), which means cats' elbows.

And patronymics and matronymics --O' Mac, Mc, Ap, -son, -dottir, etc., and locationals like -von or -van

ville, field, fitz, etc.
trade -- related smith, mason, fisher, shoemaker, baker, shakespeare (spear thrower?), etc.

Plus lots of nature or color-related names, or names with a meaning in some other language, e. g. Neil Sedaka, tzedaka is Hebrew for charity.

Many German-Jewish last names are really WASPY-sounding once you translate them into English.

Baum = tree
Wald = forest
Gruen = green
Blau = blue
Schwartz = black
Roth, Rot = red
Berg = town, -ton (a suffix meaning town, when berg is used as a suffix, such as Goldberg)
Hirsch = deer
Himmel = heaven
Herz = heart
Streich = lark
Vogel = bird
Bock = dog (Hund also means dog)
Stein = brick or stone (not just beer stein)

I believe that Farb means color, so Himmelfarb would be color of heaven -- can anyone confirm?

I used this site: http://www.dict.cc/ for a lot of my words. It's a wonderful dictionary site for German and English.

I once heard an amusing radio show in which this contention was advanced for almost all Italian family names--that they are or derive from an insulting characterization. I am not well enough informed, however, on the meanings of Italian family names to assert whether or not this is true.

The family name Martin appears in German, French and English, and possibly in other languaes as well. The only definition i know of martin as a common noun is as the name for a bird. I've always wondered if it once referred to a trade.

I believe that you are correct that farb means color, as in IG Farben, the great German chemical firm which got its start making dyes from coal tar.

Dunno 'bout the Italians but wasn't there a time when people had to purchase last names? I'm having trouble finding confirmation on that online.

I got the Katzenellenbogen name from Arthur Kurzweil, who wrote a book on Jewish genealogy. And supposedly the K's could trace their ancestry to King David which means they could also go all the way back to Moses and even Adam (and a relation to King David also means a relation to Jesus, if you believe in such things and if you think the genealogy listed in the Bible is accurate, which I suspect it's not. Rather, I suspect the Bible relates a basic framework but probably omits a bunch of generations and may very well combine a few people with similar/the same names. But I digress.). See: http://www.khazaria.com/westernjews.html

An interesting side note: Ashkenazic given names: http://www.khazaria.com/beider.html I wouldn't buy the book but the thing of it is, much like people today go with a Jr. or III child (usually a boy, and usually the first-born), Ashkenazic Jews name after the dead (and Sephardic name after the living). The A. tradition is to assure that there's no more than one person in a family with a particular name, as the Angel of Death is supposed to take the older person and not a newborn baby. Since I'm partly A. and partly S., you'd think that would be confusing, but we ended up mainly A. and hence with the A. tradition.

Naphtali became Adolph.
Malka became Molly and then Molly again, as that name is in favor again.
Sarah became Celia who became Corinne.
Yetta became Jane, Jamie and me.
Alvin became Adam and Aaron.
Morris became Matthew.
Ichil changed his name to Harry when he came to the US, and became Howard and Heather.
A different Harry became Andrew.
Max became Meredith.
Anna became Ann.
Eliezar became Evan and Lee.
Ralph became Reid.

For our genealogy, one thing we can do is link first names -- and this also gives us an idea of when people were born or died.