In Sweden we started to use family names at the end of the 1800-hundreds, that is the children inherited the same surname as their father. In the year 1901 a law was passed stating that we had to use family names.
Before that we used patronymic names. That means that the children were given a last name ending with -son or -dotter (daughter) and started with the father’s first name.

For example, if a man called Anders Nilsson had a son named Peter and a daughter named Anna, the children’s full name would be: Peter Andersson and Anna Anderssdotter. That is Peter son of Anders and Anna daughter of Anders.
If Peter had a son called Nils, then Nils’s full name would be Nils Petersson. The women did not change their last name when they married.
Surnamnes ending in "son" were normally spelled with two "s". Example: Andersson, Johnsson, Pettersson, Olsson etc.

These ways of giving surnames (patronymic) are still used on Iceland.

At the end of the 1800's when people started to change their patronymic surnames to family names they often adopted a family name with a local association to nature, farm name, village name etc. But most people kept their "-son" name as a family name.

The patronymics were mostly used in the rural areas. Among nobility, clergy, the military, etc they started much earlier with family names. Priests often spelled their names in Latin way, for example Laurentius Hornaues (Lars from Horn). The different groups had different patterns of names.

There is hardly anybody in USA or Australia who does not have close relatives in Sweden.

I have been working for org. of the emigrant History and I will write here what I know about the Swedish people and their immigration to USA for about 100 years ago.

If you want me to search for a relative in Sweden, Denmark or Norway, I am more than glad to help.



A dictionary in Swedish/English