Surnames (last names, or family names) have evolved across the globe over thousands of years, emerging in some cultures earlier than others. Evidence of this dates back to 2852 BCE in China, where, according to legend, the mythological emperor Fu Xi decreed that all citizens would adopt hereditary family names. Thousands of years later, the 11th-century Norman Conquest helped popularize surnames in England.

Today, nearly all cultures use surnames. And of the tens of millions of surnames worldwide, most fall into five broad categories: parental, occupational, locational, nickname, and decorative. Let’s explore the history behind each.

Parental surnames are derived from a parent’s first name and may be patronymic (based on the father’s name) or matronymic (based on the mother’s name). These are among the most common names in the world. For instance, the popular English surname Johnson is patronymic, originally meaning “John’s son.”

This naming pattern appears throughout history. It’s especially common in Nordic naming traditions. The Viking Erik the Red bore the surname Thorvaldsson, a direct reference to his father’s first name, Thorvald. Erik the Red’s son, Leif Erikson, followed the same naming convention. The female counterpart of this is “dóttir,” as in Björnsdóttir, or “daughter of Björn.” Today, the modern Icelandic language still uses “-dottir” and “-sson” in some of its most common last names. However, the names don’t change between parent and child anymore.

Not all parental surnames are immediately recognizable to English speakers. In Scotland, the prefix “Mac-” comes from the Gaelic word for “son,” so MacDonald translates to “son of Donald.” The female equivalent, “Nic-” (meaning “daughter of”), also exists but is less common.

This tradition of adding suffixes and prefixes spans many languages and cultures. A few more examples include “Fitz-” (Fitzwilliam, “son of William”), “-ez” (Hernandez, “son of Hernando”), “-es” (Gonzales, “son of Gonzalo”), “-ov” (Borisov, “son of Boris”), and “-ova” (Petrova, “daughter of Petr”). Note that historically, some cultures used patrilineal forms in a gender-neutral way, meaning “son of” forms were often applied to both sons and daughters, which is why they appear more frequently.

Occupational surnames hint at an ancestor’s trade. For instance, the enduring English surname Smith dates back to the Middle Ages and denotes someone who worked with metal, such as a blacksmith or coopersmith (someone who worked with copper). Because blacksmithing was one of the earliest skilled trades, Smith was once the most widespread occupational surname in Europe. Variants of this name exist in many languages, including the Arabic Najjar, the German Zimmerman, and the Czech Tesař.

Many occupational English surnames are self-explanatory, such as Baker, Barber, Carpenter, Gardener, Knight, and Shepherd. Others are less obvious, such as Kellogg, an occupational name for a pig butcher, or Tyler, the name for a roof tiler.

This practice is common in other languages as well. Some examples include the Hungarian Sörös (“beer brewer”), the Polish and Czech Ryba (“fisherman”), the Finnish Rautio (“blacksmith”), the Dutch Baas (“boss”), the Japanese Maki or 牧 (“shepherd”), the Spanish Torrero (“bullkeeper/fighter”), and the Italian Sparacello (“asparagus grower/seller”).

Locational or toponymic names are derived from a place of residence. This might refer to a town, village, or even a physical landmark. Several U.S. presidents bore locational surnames, including George Washington and Martin van Buren. Washington is English, deriving from “settlement belonging to Wassa’s people,” while Van Buren is of Dutch origin, meaning “from Buren,” a town in the Netherlands.

Surnames based on landmarks are just as common. For example, the English surname Abbey might have been given to someone who lived near an abbey. Similarly, Atwood means “dweller at the wood,” and Brook was given to a person who lived near a stream.

Many Spanish-origin surnames are also locational. Some refer to towns or regions, such as Navarro (“from Navarre”) and Davila (“from the town of Avila”), while others describe landmarks, such as Vega (“meadow”), Mendoza (“cold mountain”), Morales (“blackberry groves”), and Iglesias (“churches”).

It’s extremely common to find locational surnames in Japanese. Research suggests that about 89.5% of modern Japanese surnames are derived from place names, including villages, neighborhoods, old provinces, and modern prefectures. They’re also created from features of the local landscape. For instance, Tanaka (田中) means “middle of the rice field,” Yamaguchi (山口) means “mountain entrance,” Ono (大野) means “small field,” and Kobayashi (小林) means “small forest.”

Some surnames are derived from nicknames based on physical characteristics or personality traits. Physical descriptions are especially common, as in Armstrong (“strong arm”), Swift (“a fast or agile person”), and Little, Short, and Long (all describing stature).

Hair, being such a distinguishing physical feature, is one of the most common categories. Fairfax, for example, is derived from an English nickname for someone with beautiful, long hair (from the Old English fæger, meaning “beautiful, pleasant,” and feax, meaning “hair”). The Italian surname Ricci means “curly haired” and is derived from the Latin ericius, meaning “hedgehog.” Other surname references to hair include the German Braun (“brown hair”), the Spanish Cabello (“thick hair”), the German Kraus (“curly hair”), the German Schwarzkopf (“black hair”), and the English/Scottish Read/Reid (“red hair”). There are even surnames for a lack of hair — the Czech/Slovak surname Lysý means “bald.”

Personality traits also shaped surnames. The English Goodfellow and the Spanish Cortes (meaning “polite”) offer flattering examples. But others are less kind. Consider these German surnames: Klossner (“hermit”), Protz (“pompous”), and Stieber, meaning “to run away,” possibly given to a cowardly person or a thief. Other examples include the Irish Quigley, meaning “untidy,” and the Italian Quattrocchi, a reference to someone wearing glasses, from quattro, meaning “four” and occhi, meaning “eyes.” 

Decorative, or ornamental, surnames are often derived from nature (Rivers, Fields, Bloomfield), metals (Silverstein and Goldberg), or idealized qualities, such as Noble or Darling. Unlike nickname surnames, decorative surnames were not necessarily descriptive of the name bearer. Instead, they were chosen because they sounded pleasant or conveyed positive symbolism.

Some well-known historical figures boast decorative surnames, such as German physicist Albert Einstein, whose name means “one” (ein) “stone” (stein). Another German figure, Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the namesake printing press, bears a surname meaning “good” (guot) “mountain” (berg).

You might also recognize famous names in fashion among this category. The surname of designer Christian Dior likely comes from the French word doré, meaning “golden.” The department store Nordstrom, named after co-founder John W. Nordstrom, derives from the Swedish words nord, meaning “north,” and ström, meaning “stream.”

Though decorative surnames exist simply for their symbolic value, others offer clues about ancestral lands, occupations, or personal traits. In all of these categories, surnames serve as lasting reminders of the identities of earlier generations.

Today’s cruciverbalists (people who play crossword puzzles) might prefer a smartphone version over filling in the boxes on paper, but the origin of these word puzzles is found in the newspaper. A version of crossword puzzles appeared in England during the 19th century, but they were simple games targeted at children. Most likely a development of existing word squares — groups of words arranged so the letters read the same vertically and horizontally — they were mainly printed in children’s puzzle books. 

Crossword puzzles as we know them today were a later invention, widely credited to Arthur Wynne, a journalist at the long-defunct New York World newspaper. In 1913, Wynne was managing the “Fun” section of the paper’s Sunday edition and needed something new for the Christmas issue. Perhaps inspired by memories of word puzzles he’d solved back in England, Wynne created what he called a “Word-Cross Puzzle.” 

His puzzle used a diamond-shaped grid with a hollow center and the letters F-U-N already filled in. Unlike modern crosswords, Wynne’s original puzzle had no black squares to separate words. The clues were mostly of average difficulty — for example, “A day dream” (“reverie”) and “To govern” (“rule”). Others required quite specialized knowledge: “An aromatic plant” (“nard”) and “The fibre of the gomuti palm” (“doh”).  

Wynne’s first puzzle was published on December 21, 1913, and the feature soon became hugely popular with readers. A few weeks after that initial publication, an illustrator accidentally changed “Word-Cross” to “Cross-Word,” and the name stuck permanently. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the spelling “crossword” was in use by the 1920s. By that time, readers were clamoring for the word puzzles, and when Simon & Schuster printed The Crossword Puzzle Book in 1924, it became an immediate bestseller. It wasn’t long before almost every newspaper in the United States and Great Britain contained some kind of crossword. 

As for Wynne, he tried to patent the puzzle, but the editors at the New York World refused to pay the associated costs. His only consolation, perhaps, is his legacy: He created one of the world’s most popular pastimes.

Storytelling has been part of the human experience for millennia, but the novel emerged as a distinct form in literature. A novel is, by definition, “an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting.” 

The Epic of Gilgamesh is often cited as the first book ever written, but it’s technically a highly exaggerated biographical history, not a fictional novel. It drew on the kind of communal storytelling that also inspired the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. 

Traditionally, a novel needs a location, a recognizable character, and ideally a lesson. Contemporary novels push against the form, but the standard requirements haven’t changed much over the centuries. Many scholars identify the first English-language novel as The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719. It tells the story of a man who was shipwrecked and had to figure out how to survive on an island. 

Robinson Crusoe might be the most well known early novel, but there are many other titles in contention for the original novel. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is a satire that follows the exploits of Japanese high courtiers. It was written and published in Japan in the early 11th century. Beware the Cat by William Baldwin was written in 1553, so, while lesser known and sometimes overlooked, it’s an earlier English novel than Robinson Crusoe. Don Quixote (full title: The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha), published in Spanish in two parts in 1605 and 1615, is often named as the first novel of the modern era. And the first science-fiction novel is thought to be The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World by Margaret Cavendish, published in 1666. 

One thing is clear: Novels changed the world. The ability for people to read and discuss the same story (outside of religious and historical stories) meant they were able to expand their minds and empathize with different characters in ways that were previously unheard of. While the first novel is hard to pin down, new and exciting examples are published every day.

Languages other than English distinguish between the singular “you” and the plural “you.” They even distinguish between male and female contexts, and between informal and formal settings. Why is English an outlier?

The Italian singular for “you” is tu, and the plural is voi. In Spanish, the singular “you” is tú or usted and the plural is vosotros or ustedes. The Chinese singular is ni and the plural is nǐ men. In Hebrew, the singular for “you” is ata for males and at for females; the corresponding plurals are atem and aten.

French distinguishes between tu for the informal singular “you” and vous when more formal. Likewise, the German du is informal for the singular you and Sie in more formal usage.

To explain how“you” became the catchall for any “you” that you may ever encounter in English, we need to get into the weeds a bit. Starting with Old English, there was the obsolete letter “þ,” known as “thorn” (unrelated to prickly bits on a plant) and pronounced “th,” as well as references to the nominative and the accusative. The nominative is the subject in a sentence (“You are smart”) and the accusative is the direct object in a sentence (“I love you”). The Old English singular “you” was þu (pronounced “thoo”) for the nominative case and þe (pronounced “thee”) for the accusative case. The corresponding plurals were ge” and eow.

In Middle English, the thorn letter dropped out, and the singular “you” was “thou” for the nominative and “thee” for the accusative. The corresponding plurals were “ye” and “yow.” 

During the Middle English period (1150 to 1500), in situations requiring more politeness and respect, the plural “ye” and “you” applied when addressing just one person (compare to the royal “we”). By the 14th century, the pronunciation of “ye” and “you” merged into “you.” By the 17th century, as that usage increased, “thou” and “thee” evolved to be used only in a personal or superior-to-inferior relationship. And so “you” evolved to apply in the singular and the plural.

That ambiguity has spawned various ways to distinguish one “you” from many, so now we have “you guys,” “youse,” and “you-uns” in the U.S., and British English distinguishes “you lot” from the singular “you.” In Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland, the plural is “yous.”

Southern English may have the best solution: “y’all” for the plural and “all y’all” for even more plurality.