Trencreek, Trengoff, and Trenwith. But not Trendle.

January 14, 2011 12:31 PM

I'm looking for lists of extinct surnames - family names that have fallen out of use entirely, on a global scale. I'm particularly interested in surnames of Anglo-Saxon/Brittanic origin, but would welcome resources from other backgrounds as well.

So far, the results I've gotten while trolling through Google mainly relate to the Gatson-Walton method, and occasionally Domesday Book references. There seem to be academic papers referring to the frequency of family names dying out, which claim this is "well documented" (paraphrasing)... but I haven't found this data they're alluding to, or at least not collected together in handy reference form. I'm not interested in calculating the likelihood of surname extinction -- I want nice, long lists of surnames that haven't been attested in census data or other means of inquest since [1801, 1770, 1638, etc.]

Does this even exist?

posted by dorothy humbird to Society & Culture (9 answers total)

In a sense, many Irish surnames are extinct.
In the 16th and 17th Century, the British anglicized all Irish surnames.

The surname Tuile, for example, was anglicized into the name Flood.
My original family surname no longer exists, instead we have the name Flood.
posted by Flood at 12:46 PM on January 14, 2011

Searching this book for "extinct" brings up a number of candidates.
posted by Knappster at 12:56 PM on January 14, 2011 [4 favorites]

Lots of relatively obscure Jewish surnames from Eastern Europe (that is, ones that were only ever attested in a small area to begin with) are extinct, for obvious reasons. I ought to be a Pakelchik, but the only people I know of who still owned that name in 1939 died without passing it on to the next generation (the cousins on that line are all Parkers now.)

Anyway, I wouldn't be shocked to find a doctoral thesis or three on the matter.
posted by SMPA at 1:20 PM on January 14, 2011

Great question! But I think you should e-mail or tweet this to a professional genealogist or genealogy blogger, such as Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak¹ or Dick Eastman, and see if they have resources for you, or if they can throw the question out to their many readers and contacts. Both are very web savvy and well-connected.

Also, the "Hitler" surname is now extinct, obviously, but you can find Midwestern Americans named Hitler as recently as the 1930 Federal Census. I don't know what they changed the name to, but the 1940 Census will be released next year, so I guess we'll find out.

¹ That's not a typo; her maiden and married names are both Smolenyak and she uses both, but she and her husband are not related, although their ancestors came from the same small town and ethnic group. Yay genealogy.
posted by Asparagirl at 1:33 PM on January 14, 2011

The Hitler surname is anything but extinct. I read an article recently about a girl with the name, from Bavaria, who is very traditional and can't wait to get married so she can change it the "right" way! (Her whole family has the name, and are no fans of Adolf.)

Switchboard lists about 30 Hitlers in the US.

Surely, there are fewer Hitlers than one would expect, but the name still exists for living people.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 1:41 PM on January 14, 2011

Many less common family names of minor royalty have died out since the end of WWII as well, particularly in areas that became Communist.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 1:42 PM on January 14, 2011

In re Hitler: The cop show "Hill Street Blues" had a character named Vic Hitler Jr. and had a certain amount of droll fun with it.
posted by charris5005 at 2:35 PM on January 14, 2011

Here's a list of very embarrassing French surnames that include body parts, bodily functions, sex acts, insults, etc. Some were actually harmless a few centuries ago, but language evolution gave them unfortunate meanings (a bordel is now a brothel, but used to be a little wooden house). Others were definitely not innocent : the ancestor of people called Couillard had - or was rumoured to have - big couilles (balls).
In modern times, people born with such names often had them changed officially to something more palatable (Couillard->Bouillard, Douillart). After looking at the White Pages, it looks like that while some of these names are still in use, others are nearly extinct (1 Biteaubec (Dickinmouth), 10 named Penis) or totally extinct (Con, Cascouille).
posted by elgilito at 2:38 PM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

I want point out historically having a surname is very uncommon. Surnames are usually reserved for royalty. Most cultures don't use surnames; they just use one name to identify themselves. Anglo-Saxon is a Germanic tribe and like most Germanic tribes they don't use surnames. If you really want to compile a list. Go look at list of Medieval English People concentrate on the nobility and see how many of their names survived into modern day.

I don't think you're going to find many people with the Roman nomina or cognomina in modern day.

From wikipedia:

With the gradual influence of Greek/Christian culture throughout the Empire, the use of formal family names declined. By the time of the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, family names were uncommon in the Eastern Roman (i.e. Byzantine) Empire. In Western Europe where Germanic culture dominated the aristocracy, family names were almost non-existent. They would not significantly reappear again in Eastern Roman society until the 10th century, apparently influenced by the familial affiliations of the Armenian military aristocracy.

Chinese usually have one character for the surname. The use of multiple characters for surname is very very rare. Only few survived into modern time (e.g. Ouyang, Shangguan, Sima, Situ)
posted by Carius at 11:46 PM on January 14, 2011