Family names

[FS]

Also, family names haven't always existed. I don't know much about the subject even in my own country, just that during my country's French occupation, it was decreed that everyone had to choose a last name to be more easily identified, or something. Up till that time, people had been using their last name as a reference to their father: "Peter's Son", "John's Daughter". Anyway, a whole lot of new, made-up names suddenly appeared this way (some people even made up joke names because they thought the concept was stupid and wouldn't last - "Bornnude" is still a rather common name over here). Some people probably combined their existing last name into a single word, which would be where names like Johnson and Peterson come from.