Czechia Naming Customs: Difference between revisions

===Historical Background===

 

In earlier centuries throughout Europe, one name was usually sufficient. But as populations increased it became necessary to distinguish between individuals with the same name. The problem was usually solved by adding descriptive information. Thus we find John the tailor, John the son of Nicholas, John the short, John the newcomer, or John from Moravia. When these "surnames" first came into being they were applied only to one person and not to the whole family. In time, these names became hereditary so that they passed from generation to generation.  

 

It is not possible to determine the exact year or even the century when hereditary family names were taken. In most countries, the process took two or three centuries to become universally established in the society. Hereditary names were first used by the nobility and wealthy land owners. Later the custom was followed by merchants and townspeople and eventually by the common village folk.

 

Surnames in the modern sense were first used among Byzantine and Venetian nobility about the ninth century. From Venice the practice spread to much of Western Europe. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the custom was widely practiced in Britain and France. In Central Europe; Germany, Hungary, and Austria; including the area now in the Czech Republic, the practice was well established by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.