From: andersa@Riga.DoCS.UU.SE (Anders Andersson)
Subject: Swedish patronymics (was: Ancestors)
Organization: Uppsala University, Sweden
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 21:22:06 GMT

[Note that I have added soc.roots to the newsgroup list.
 Please direct followups as you find appropriate.]

In article <12870@chalmers.se>, olof@me.chalmers.se (olof daunius) writes:
> In article <21JUL199216031095@ucis.vill.edu>, samuelson@ucis.vill.edu
> (SAMUELSON, JEFF) writes:
> > Can anyone living in Sweden tell me how common the name Samuelson is?  I
> > am trying to fill in some family history and like many Americans, we
> > are rather vague in our geneologies.  I would like to be able to contact
> > relatives there if possible.  Any info as to wether this name is popular or
> > specific to a single area would be most helpful.

>  A quick look in the Goteborg telephone book gives appr. 850 Samuelson's
>  (or Samuelsson). The directory lists appr. 250 000 telephone numbers.
>  Some 11 000 are named Johansson, which I believe is the most common surname.
> 
>  My guess is that the Samuelson's are pretty evenly distributed
> troughout Sweden.

Please find attached to this followup an article I just wrote on the subject,
as I believe the above question may be very common with Americans tracing
their Swedish (or generally Scandinavian) ancestry.
--
Anders Andersson, Dept. of Computer Systems, Uppsala University
Paper Mail: Box 520, S-751 20 UPPSALA, Sweden
Phone: +46 18 183170   EMail: andersa@DoCS.UU.SE

--------- Text on Swedish patronymics follows ---------

One important thing to keep in mind for the genealogist doing research in
Sweden, is the Swedish use of patronymic last names, practiced until the
middle to late 19th century.  Before then, very few among the general
populace maintained any single family name over the generations (the primary
exception was the nobility, but there were also other families of some rank
that had their specific family names).

Ordinary country people generally used patronymics.  When it was not
sufficient to mention a person by his or her first (or rather only) name,
such as "Maria" or "Anders", various qualifications were added, of which
the dominant form was to specify who was the person's father, thus one
talked about "Maria, Johans dotter" (daugther) or "Anders, Olofs son".
This became so commonplace that it was shortened into "Maria Johansdotter"
and "Anders Olofsson".  Thus one line of successive male descendants could
look as follows (this is an example of an actual line, with approximate
years of birth within parentheses):

	Daniel Bryngelsson (1710)
	Pehr Danielsson (1740)
	Jonas Persson (1770)
	Olof Jonasson (1800)
	Anders Olofsson (1830)
	Anders Andersson (1860)

i.e. even though two persons were father and son in the same household,
they didn't share their last names.  Women didn't change their names when
they got married; a combination like "Maria Olofsson" would have been
self-contradictory and unthinkable in those days.  Both first and last
name were specific to each individual in a family.  If the father died
and the mother remarried with a man having a different first name, the
children from her first marriage maintained their original patronymic.

Spelling wasn't crucial, and some names had several forms which were
considered equal.  Thus the sons of Peter, Petter, Per or Pehr all had
the 'same' last name:  Persson, Pehrsson or Pettersson.  Likewise,
Olofsson was often shortened Olsson with no change in meaning, and the
same with Johansson/Jonsson etc.

What happened in the 19th century was no less than a naming revolution,
by many judged as a cultural disaster.  Here I make no attempt to explain
the reason for the change, as my knowledge of it is very limited.  The
net effect was that unless the family adopted a non-patronymic surname,
whatever patronymic name happened to be in use by the father was suddenly
inherited by his children, men and women alike, and maybe also adopted by
his wife.

At the time of this writing, the abovementioned change took place some
three generations ago.  Today the old practice is only in very limited
use at a few (mostly rural) places in Sweden, something which has been
made easier by recent changes to the Swedish name law.

The rest of Scandinavia has a similar naming tradition, with -sen
being a common replacement for -son in Denmark and Norway.  In Iceland,
the patronymic practice lives on to this day.

Thus, if you have a surname ending in -son, and Swedish ancestors who
emigrated before ca 1900, the chance that you will find any relatives by
looking up your surname in Swedish telephone directories of today is very
slim, if not nonexistent.  At the time of the change, a lot of people
adopted family names with no requirements of uniqueness, and as most
patronymics were formed from very common, male first names, thousands of
families all across Sweden ended up with surnames like Andersson (2700),
Bengtsson (200), Eriksson (3000), Fredriksson (200), Gustafsson (1100),
Jakobsson (200), Jansson (1500), Johansson (1900), Jonsson (500), Karlsson
(2000), Larsson (1200), Mattsson (400), Nilsson (900), Olsson (900),
Persson (700), Pettersson (1500), and Svensson (400), if we limit
ourselves to names with at least 200 entries in the Uppsala telephone
directory of some 80,000 subscribers (the approximate count for each
name being mentioned in parentheses for comparison), without being
particularly related to each other.

This doesn't mean doing genealogy in Sweden is particularly difficult;
on the contrary it's quite easy due to the availability of lots of
written records.  You simply need to be aware of this phenomenon, and
maybe take on a slightly different approach as compared to research in
other countries.  However, a general introduction to genealogy in
Sweden is outside the scope of this text.

Please send comments on this document to Anders.Andersson@DoCS.UU.SE.

--------- End of text on Swedish patronymics ---------
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic