Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 691 / March 24, 1877

There might be much amusement in tracing the origin of family names. Long ago—say about six or seven hundred years since—there were no family names at all. People had Christian names and nothing more, and of course there was often considerable difficulty in distinguishing individuals. Such at present is the case in Turkey, where the old eastern practice of using but a single name continues to be followed. Surnames were not introduced into England until after the Conquest. The fashion of using two names came to us from France, but for a time was confined to families of distinction, and extended slowly over the country. One thing is said to have promoted its use. Young ladies of aspiring tastes declined to marry gentlemen who had only a Christian name, such as John or Thomas, for they would necessarily have still to be called by their own name, Mary, Elizabeth, or whatever it was. Spinsters accordingly thought it to be a grand thing to form an alliance with a person possessing the distinction of a family name, by which they should ever after be called.
Curiously enough, so difficult is it to alter old usages, that until very lately surnames were scarcely used among the humbler classes of people in some parts of Great Britain remote from centres of civilisation. In these places, a creditor would enter the name of his debtor in his books as John the son of Thomas, just as you see genealogies in the Old Testament. Only now, from improved communication with the outer world, have practices of this kind gone out of use. We can easily understand how the names ending in son , as Johnson, Thomson, Manson (abbreviation of Magnusson), originated; and it is equally easy to conjecture how names from professions, such as Smith, Miller, or Cooper came into existence. It is equally obvious that many family names are derived from the nature of the complexion of individuals, as Black, Brown, and White.
At first sight, there is a mystery as regards the different ways in which certain names are spelled. Smith is sometimes written Smyth; and in some instances Brown has an e at the end of it. We see the name Reid spelled as Reade, Reed, and Rede. We see Long, Lang, and Laing, all variations of one name. The same thing can be said of Strong, Strang, and Strange; of Little and Liddle; of Home and Hume; of Chambers and Chalmers; and so on with a host of surnames in daily use. The mystery which hangs over various spellings is cleared up on a consideration of the indifferent scholarship which prevailed until even the middle of the eighteenth century. Names in old legal documents and in the inscriptions on the blank leaves of family Bibles, are written in all sorts of ways. A man seldom wrote his name twice in succession the same way. Each member of a family followed the spelling suggested by his own fancy, and added to or altered letters in his name with perfect indifference. Eccentricities of this kind are still far from uncommon in the signatures of imperfectly educated persons. There is, in fact, a constant growth of new names, springing from ignorance and carelessness, though also in some cases from a sense of refinement.