The History of Family Names

Some background information:
When the first proper names came up, there was a true connection between the name and its bearer. The first proper names might have meant something like 'lisper,' 'one-legged guy.' In ancient times, when you met a Roman by the name of Quintus Juius Calvus, you could be sure that he was the fifth son (indicated by his praenomen) of a man of the Julian dynasty (as shown by his nomen) and, moreover, that he was bald-headed (the characteristic feature that gave birth to his cognomen). But already in Roman times, this connection held true only for the nomina and cognomina, but not always for praenomina, for instance, not for Caius, Cnaeus, and the like.
The need to be given two names in one's lifetime arose with the growing population (there might have been more than one lisper in a community) and social relationships which meant that one term would not be sufficient to identify a certain individual (e.g. 'one-eyed lisper'). When these second names became hereditary (at first in the region of Venice in the twelfth century, later also in many other civilizations like Germany, Britain, France, Italy), the iconic relation between name and person was, of course, lost. The names had thus become true 'family names' (the term surname, by the way, goes back to French surnom, today in French: 'nickname').
Interestingly enough, sundry societies have continued to exist in which a person's last name has not been rendered hereditary. If the Icelander Olaf Johanson is blessed with a son he names Erik, the latter will become Erik Olafson; and a parallel system is established for girls. An Arab by the name of Abdul ibn Hussein and a Jew named Yakub ben Abraham are (almost doubtlessly) sons of an Abdul and an Abraham respectively. Russians, who have thrre names, always reveal their father's first name through their own second one: hence, Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev's father was named Sergey; and if Mikhail had a sister called Anna, she would be Anna Sergeyevitcha Gorbacheva. It should be noted, however, that non-hereditary systems of family-names seem to be limited (at least in modern societies) to forming last names exclusively on the basis of family relationships.

In Central and Western European societies, we can classify our last names into the following groups:

  1. (1) baptismal names/patronymic names (i.e names going back to first names)

Examples: singers Cliff Richard, Tom Jones, George Harrison, actor Tom Hanks, Pamela Anderson
Sound developments may have disfigured the names' original shape: e.g. Eugene O'Neill (from NigelO' is a Celtic form meaning 'son of,' as does M(a)c as in Paul McCartney and Elle Macpherson), Anthony Perkins (from Peterin its diminutive form: 'little Peter's son').

  1. (2) local names

Examples: James Bond author Ian Fleming (from Flemings = Flanders), director Steven Spielberg, actor (and ex-mayor) Clint Eastwood, ex-president George Bush

  1. (3) occupational names

Examples: author Arthur Miller, actress Elizabeth Taylor, singer Tracy Chapman, actor Chuck Norris (from nurse), author William Faulkner (from falconer), actress Jodie Foster (Middle English forester), TV host David Letterman

  1. (4) nicknames (referring, often for humorous effects, to specific mental or physical characteristics or the behavior of the name bearer)

Examples: actor Cary Grant, musician Louis Armstrong, actor Tony Curtis (from French courtois 'courtly'), author Walt Whitman, actress Linda Gray (J.R.'s wife in Dallas), Michael J. Fox (as cunning as a fox)

Especially in the US, the melting-pot (or salad bowl?) society, many last names reveal that the bearer comes from an immigrant family: 

Often it turns out to be extremely difficult to determine the exact origin of name sicne you're not always provided with the necessary information: Where does your family come from? What was their social status? What was the name's original spelling?)

Now it's up to you. Try to classify the last names of the following people:
Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Steve Martin, Bill Clinton, Whoopie Goldberg, Barry White, Cindy Crawford

Literature:
BARDSLEY Charles W. (1968), English Surnames. Tokyo: Tuttle.
REANEY P. H. (1991), A Dictionary of English Surnames. London et al.: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

N.B.: The same classification can be adopted to German last names. Try to classify the last-names of all class members. You may want to take the recently published dtv-Atlas Namenkunde by Konrad KUNZE (1997) as a reference book, or GOTTSCHALD Max (1982), Deutsche Namenkunde, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.