Are people with the same last name related?
Sometimes, but not always. Take the surname Green for example. There were several people who used the surname Green in England. Some of them came to the American Colonies. Many Americans with the surname Green are related, especially if they come from English Greensor Greenes, but still not all are related. Then we have Americans who use Green as a surname who came from other places, Germans named Grün, Italians named Verdi and so on who anglicized their surnames on arrival in America. An uncommon surname probably does have more of a chance of being related. Most Americans with the surname Beauchamp come from the same Englishman who settled in Maryland in the mid 1600s, but some Beauchamps come from French Canadians who moved across the border and if they are related to the Maryland Beauchamps the connection would be before 1066, which is kind of hard to prove. Everyone with the surname Whelchel , extremely uncommon, is related and they all come from the same German family which migrat
Well, it appears we are all related if we go back for enough but we don’t all share the same root person of our surname. When surnames were assigned or taken in Europe during the last millennium it wasn’t impossible for legitimate sons of the same man to wind up with a different surname and still each could have shared his surname with others with no known relationship. The reason for them was for taxation purposes not to identify a man as a member of a family. Too many Freds, Toms, Sams and Joes in the same town or village and they had to have a way of telling them apart. Most in England had a surname by the end of the 14th century. Still in many cases it was a couple of more centuries before the same surname was passed down to subsequent generations. Now you have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents and it doubles up each generation you go back and begins to pyramid big time. You get back somewhere in the first part of the 2nd millennium and th
Though a lot of people believe you are in the small town I live in, that’s not the case. My mother’s maiden name (of course, I’m american) is Dobbs, to which there was my grandfather’s family of Dobbs and another set of Dobbs that lived in our area; we were not related to them. My father’s surname is Howard, and there are plenty of Howard’s in this town, but i’m only related to a few of them, mainly my father’s brothers and mother. Both my family lines came from England (I do believe) so Howard is a common name over here, though I’m not sure about Dobbs. My wife’s maiden name was Green, and they are tons of Green’s in this town, but she is not related to them. And the Green’s she is related to in this town she wished that she wasn’t.
