Titel: Name Law of 18??
Skrivet av: Ingela Martenius skrivet 2011-09-05, 20:19
One of the main reasons I wrote the article referred to is that using patronymics was not done away with in 1901. People believe this because it had become socially desirable during the last decades of the 19th century to use a family name so many had started using family names - and most people seem unable to distinguish between a law telling you how to acquire a family name and a law saying that you must acquire a family name.
However, the general trend in Swedish society was to assume a family name. In 1917 a law was enacted to regulate childrens' surnames, and in 1921 women were forced to take the husband's name on marriage (rescinded in 1963).
But it was only in 1963 that you were forced to take a family name - before that you could if you wanted keep to your patronymic. In some parts of Sweden many did so (notably Dalarna, Skåne, Hälsingland but also elsewhere). My mother's family certainly did so (inverted snobbery).
It is quite possible to run a modern country without family names; in Iceland they're forbidden (patronymics must be used) unless you can prove it was used in your family before a certain date.
The advice given by SweGGate isn't quite accurate either: patronymics made into family names were regularly used from at least the 1860's in the cities while patronmics were regularly used right up to WW I and sometimes as late as the early 1920's in the country. Added to which you have the resistance movement who didn't want family names. Patronymics transformed into family names are in fact known as early as the 18th century; some were even ennobled with what was originally a patronymic (von Axelson, af Robson e.g.). There were even different surname forms used in one and the same family at the same time: my grandfather was from the first time he is noted with a surname using his father's patronymic (his father was Jeppa Nilsson, he was Nilsson) as a family name while all of the nine siblings who reached adulthood without exception used a proper patronymic (Jeppson). This is not a unique situation, many people ask me about it! Conclusion: you cannot say that at a certain date we all used one or the other name form, they were used concurrently up to 1963.
Ingela PS. When I was new to genealogy I was amazed at genealogists' generally mindless acceptance of 1901 as a date for a sea-change about names; as a law student I had many years earlier learned of the far more important dates 1917, 1921 and of course 1963.