last names were not a ancient thing that's why a lot of names are based on a profession a lot of times it was based on the father's name that's why you have John's son or transposed to Johnson
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Abrahamic people generally did name tracking based on heritage; Hebrew used “bar” and Arabic uses “ibn” or “bin”. So the apostle Peter was called Peter by his friends, but was Shimon bar Jonah legally… unless there was another Shimon whose father’s name was Jonah, at which point they’d tag on another “bar” up the patriarchal lineage until their names differed.
So if you wanted to know which Jesus/Jeshu/Joshua was Jesus the Christ, you go to the gospel of Matthew, where the first 16 verses are actually Jesus’ complete “last name”.
And Abrahamic cultures aren’t the only ones who do this. Celtic cultures do it too; MacDonald means “son of Donald” and Scottish clans can “mac” their way back quite a ways.
And in Ireland, you have Mc and O — Mc means “son of” and “O” essentially means you are a landholder on that person’s land, with O’ being short for “of”.
Then you’ve got Norse names which are a bit looser; we have Eric the Red (he had red hair), but then we have Lief, Eric’s son who was identified by the fame of his father.
Then you’ve have English last names that describe the person’s occupation, like baker, chandler (makes candles), smith, etc. This was taken from German, which used a similar descriptor.
In the bible, only key people have their “last name” listed; in most situations it didn’t matter, and you’ll see people referred to by either their given name or their nickname interchangeably.
And Greek and Roman people tended to be named after the town they were born in — and since Paul was a Roman citizen, his official name was “Saul of Tarsus”. Of course, there were likely many Sauls in Tarsus, so he would have also gone by his occupation (tentmaker) and only reverted to “son of” to differentiate him from other Sauls of Tarsus who were tentmakers.
Where does this leave women?
In all those cultures, they were property of their father or husband, so didn’t have their own last name — for the exceptions (widows etc), they’d use the existing naming strategy the men used.
Or where they were from: da Vinci, Gutenberg. The Bible also doesn't have a lot of action in China where last names were a thing before Jesus.
Did people only get those if they moved, or was everyone from Vinci named da Vinci? (Similar to the Texas Pete premise)
These names tend to be attached to them after the fact. I imagine there were a few Leonardos or Johannesses roaming about at their time so much like Alexander became The Great to set him apart from all other Alexanders, these names are scribes' and historians' shorthand to make clear which Leo or Joe you were talking about. And a few centuries of historical telephone later they seem to fit perfectly in our first name/last name system. Which in western Europe really only became officially standardized with the Code Civil from our friend Napoleon.
His full name was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, so presumably he’d be known locally as Leonardo di ser Piero.
Pretty sure you get these if you move. These names are common in my part of the world and they’re never common in the place the name refers to. At some point an ancestor moved and it stuck to their kids.
To answer one of your follow-ups: Christ is a title, it's the English version of the Greek word for messiah.
Jesus Christ = Jesus the Christ = Jesus the Messiah = Christ Jesus and so forth
So when you say, Christ the Messiah, you’re really saying Messiah the Messiah. Man people were so silly back then. Anyway, I’m off to the Los Angeles Angels game. 👋
They absolutely were. Biblical AF as friggin hell, man. Anyway, hope they hit a home run out of the park at the game!
Oh, like Winnie the Pooh
I’ve always found it fascinating that Winnie the Pooh and Jack the Ripper have the same middle name.
Not sure about Iscariot, but iirc Christ is a title, not a name. It's actually Jesus the Christ, but that takes slightly more effort to say and languages often develop the habit of slowly streamlining themselves.
So it kind of became a quasi-name*~ because of how much easier it is to say as one.
*~or maybe 'ascendant title' would be more accurate? I feel like there's a specific word for this that I cant seem to remember atm
Edit: the immense volume of translations made of the original text (and then ofc the translations of translations of translations etc) definitely play a role in Christ's transformed usage, as well
Last names were commonly just where you were from, who was your father, or what was your profession.
Jesus Of Nazareth, or Jesus Denazareth, Jesus Nazarethton, Jesus Di’Nazareth, Jesus Von Nazareth, Jesus Van Der Nazareth.
Jesus Son Of Joseph, or Jesus O’Joseph, Jesus Josephson, Jesus McJoseph, Jesus Bin Joseph, Jesus Josephsen, Jesus Ibn Joseph.
Jesus the Carpenter, or Jesus Carpenter.
(Those are just examples from different languages of how last names were commonly created, not what they actually called Jesus.)
Christ was his status as a holy figure. Like the “saint” in Saint Peter. It means “the anointed one” or “messiah”.
I heard somewhere that Mary does have a last name and it is referenced in the quran. But idn if that is real
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Iscariot
Judas's epithet "Iscariot" (Ὶσκάριωθ or Ὶσκαριώτης), which distinguishes him from the other people named "Judas" in the gospels, is usually thought to be a Greek rendering of the Hebrew phrase איש־קריות, (Κ-Qrîyôt), meaning "the man from Kerioth".[17][9][18][19] This interpretation is supported by the statement in the Gospel of John 6:71 that Judas was "the son of Simon Iscariot".[9] Nonetheless, this interpretation of the name is not fully accepted by all scholars.[17][9] One of the most popular alternative explanations holds that "Iscariot" (ܣܟܪܝܘܛܐ, 'Skaryota' in Syriac Aramaic, per the Peshitta text) may be a corruption of the Latin word sicarius, meaning "dagger man",[17][9][20][21] which referred to a member of the Sicarii (סיקריים in Aramaic), a group of Jewish rebels who were known for assassinating people in crowds using long knives hidden under their cloaks.[17][9] This interpretation is problematic, however, because there is nothing in the gospels to associate Judas with the Sicarii,[9] and there is no evidence that the cadre existed during the 30s AD when Judas was alive.[22][9]
A possibility advanced by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg is that "Iscariot" means "the liar" or "the false one", from the Hebrew איש-שקרים. C. C. Torrey suggests instead the Aramaic form שְׁקַרְיָא or אִשְׁקַרְיָא, with the same meaning.[23][24] Stanford rejects this, arguing that the gospel writers follow Judas's name with the statement that he betrayed Jesus, so it would be redundant for them to call him "the false one" before immediately stating that he was a traitor.[9] Some have proposed that the word derives from an Aramaic word meaning "red color", from the root סקר.[25] Another hypothesis holds that the word derives from one of the Aramaic roots סכר or סגר. This would mean "to deliver", based on the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah 19:4 (a theory advanced by J. Alfred Morin).[24] The epithet could also be associated with the manner of Judas's death, hanging. This would mean Iscariot derives from a kind of Greek-Aramaic hybrid: אִסְכַּרְיוּתָא, Iskarioutha, meaning "chokiness" or "constriction". This might indicate that the epithet was applied posthumously by the remaining disciples, but Joan E. Taylor has argued that it was a descriptive name given to Judas by Jesus, since other disciples such as Simon Peter/Cephas (Kephas "rock") were also given such names.[24]
Because there were few enough people at that point in history, and they rarely moved around enough, such that a second name would be necessary to tell people apart.
Surnames are a pretty recent thing generally. Ashkenazi Jews only got them in like nineteenth or twentieth century, forced by German bureaucracy — and a lot of the surnames adopted were the person's profession.
Iceland doesn't have surnames to this day — they have patronymics instead. Singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir's last name means ‘daughter of Guðmundur’.