Surname Origins: Fuselier, Scott, Simmons, Covington

In England, family surnames were not usual until after the Norman conquest in the eleventh century. People were known by first names, sometimes qualified by adjectives such as Red John and Little John, or by place names such as Sir John of the Glen and Sir John of the Lake. Shortly after William the Conqueror made good his claim to the throne in the Battle of Hastings, 1066, he ordered every man in the kingdom to choose a surname for himself.

Some people took second names from the places in which they lived: Marsh, Underhill, Field, Atwater, White, Black, Gray, Faine, Golden, Brown. Some took their nicknames for last names: Moody, Blythe, Sharp, Goodman, Wise, Armstrong. By the thousands, young men proud of their fathers added "son" to their father’s first name. Since John was the most popular of first names, that accounts for the many Johnsons, and it’s shorter form Jones. Many people took names from occupations: Miller, Carpenter, Wainwright, Cooper, Potter, Shepard, Archer, Baker, Farmer. In those days "Smith" did not necessarily mean "blacksmith." It meant "one who smites or hits." So men of many different occupations chose Smith, or one of the many variants, like Arrowsmith, Goldsmith, Tallsmith.

At first the new surnames were not passed along to the rest of the family. Each man chose his own, so it was quite possible to find a father named John Smith with six sons known as Miles Johnson, Mark Farmer, Edward Cook, Arthur Cowherd, Robin Fisher and Mathew Short.

What one writer on genealogy describes as "the erosion of time" began to change the pronunciation of certain names. Nailsmith became Nasmith. Seven Oaks became Snooks. Beghouse and Backhouse became Backus. Wessyngton, (meaning a place on a meadow near the mouth of a creek) eventually became Washington.

When the French families fled the wars to England, their names took on new spellings. Dickens is not a form of Dick. It is a simplification of Duquesne. Doolittle was not the nickname of a family that did little. It was the way the English pronounced and spelled De L’Hotel.

Since most of the earlier settlers of the original thirteen colonies were of British ancestry, modifications of the French, Belgians, Dutch, German and Spanish names went on at a merry pace. Peabody was originally Pebandiere and Rockefeller was Roggenfelder, Pershing was spelled Pfoershing when, long before the Revolutionary War, the family arrived from Alsace, FR. More than one Perez became Perry. Finucane became Finnegan. The great-grandfather of General Custer of "Last Stand" fame was a Hessian Soldier named Ktfster.

The French and German vowel sounds always have been difficult for the Anglo-Saxon. The pioneers were much too busy (trying to survive) to do much writing. Gradually people forgot to write the various accent marks when they did sign their names, so Müller became Miller and Abbe became Abbey and Göbbels became Gable. The same thing happened to Le Roi. It became Le Roy. Petit became variously Petty, Petitt or Little. The Greek Marangopolous sometimes turned into the rather Irish-sounding Moran, sometimes it was translated literally and became Carpenter. Kuznetsky, Kowalski and Kovacs means "Smith" in Russian, Polish and Chech respectively, so many of those names swelled the ranks of the Smith clan when they came to these shores. Pioneer Müllers, Moellers, and Molinaris became Millers. Johansens, Bjornsons, and Janssens found themselves called Johnson.

The year 1946 in America was a banner year for legal name-changing. The rush of business was mainly from Veterans who had a rugged time in the service because of complicated names and wanted to simplify them before settling down to civilian life. Others felt that such names Arthur Paine instead of Aristotelis Papademetracopoulos stood better chance of making good here. One does not have to be a citizen of America to change ones name so the name changing goes on. Unless accurate family records are kept the task of tracing ones ancestry will become more difficult as the years go by.