The Anglo-Saxons usually refer to a number of peoples who lived in the eastern and southern parts of the island of Great Britain from the beginning of the fifth century to 1066 AD, and they belong to a branch of the Germanic peoples. In ancient times, the Anglo-Saxons had only a first name, not a surname. When the Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity, they gradually used biblical names as their own names, such as Isaac, John, Peter, and Rebecca, which we commonly see, all derived from the Bible. The names of the British physicist and mathematician and astronomer Isaac Newton and the famous contemporary American novelist Isaac Asimov are derived from the Bible.
Since there are many people in a place, a village or a town with the same name, it is difficult to distinguish, and in order to distinguish between them, the surname appears. English surnames mainly come from the following three situations.
Use appearance characteristics as a surname. For example, if the person is red-haired, his last name is Russell. This is the case with the surname of former American professional basketball player Bryon Russell.
Another source of the surname is a person's name + the place name of the hometown. For example, York (York), Wood (Wood) and so on.
In addition, the formation of surnames is related to occupation. The word smith means "blacksmith; forger," while the word miller means "miller; miller." Hence the surnames: Smith, Miller, and so on.
We can also judge a person's ancestry by surname, generally using affixes to indicate blood, indicating "descendants". Common ones are -ing, -son, Mc-, Mac-, O', Fitz-, and so on. For example, the name John Dawson means John, the son of David.
Among the surnames are Browning and Sterling with Anglo-Saxon ancestry. Victorian poet Robert Browning, for example.
The suffix -son is a surname of Dutch descent, common ones are Henderson, Dickenson, stevenson. The author of the novel "Treasure Island" that we are familiar with is the British novelist Robert Louis Stevenson .)
language
If the surname begins with the prefix Mc- or Mac-, it belongs to scots, for example: McDonald (McDonald). Fits- is of French descent. For example: Fitzgerald. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a 20th-century American writer and screenwriter whose masterpiece was The Great Gatsby.