When did surnames become inheritable?
In Europe, surnames began to be used in the 12th century, but it took several centuries before the majority of Europeans had one. The primary purpose of the surname was to further distinguish people from one another. In the 13th century about a third of the male population was named William, Richard or John . To uniquely identify them, people began referring to different Williams as William the son of Andrew (leading to Anderson), William the cook (leading to Cook), William from the river (leading to Rivers), William the brown-haired (leading to Brown), and so on. Eventually these surnames became inherited, being passed from parents to children. There is no definite timeline pointing to the use of surnames as inherited. The norm is that in the 11th century people did not have surnames, whereas by the 15th century they did. On the whole, the richer and more powerful classes tended to acquire surnames earlier than the working classes and the poor, this is due mainly to the fact that the
