Why do some people have the same last name?

[Baby Pig]

I found this person on Facebook who had the same last name as me. And it turns out, he was actually my relative from my grandfather's side. So I was just wondering, since families could get separated, and some members could move to different places, is there a possibility that people with the same last names are related somehow?

[Will]

We are all related. We all came from Adam & Eve.

[StellaStarfire]

That is a possibility, but with a name like Jones or Smith or Williams, I wouldn't go calling everyone with the name my family because of course not everyone is related.

I mean, I have some people who were "separated" and such from my family who have a different last name than me.

[Sunday Crone]

Based on you premise yes some people with the same surname can be related.

[Scott]

Sometimes, you have to know that many families uprooting, immigrant and etc. will usually pick a surname more american or something they feel goes with the native surnames. It truly depends if the person has the same roots then they could be related, but like in old, old days they usually pick last names that depicted their profession, nature, or colors. This happens all over the world, so it depends on other circumstance. Hope this helps, hope its not too confusing.

[Darlene]

yes they are kin but separated in the day

[Maxi]

It is 'possible' to be related to anyone, regardless of surname and in reality you re more likely to be related to someone who doesn't have the same surname as you do..... as each generation doubles the surnames your ancestry has................ however surnames in isolation are not the way to find ancestry or even cousins etc

Why do some people have the same last name? this will explain http://familytimeline.webs.com/originsofsurnames.htm

[Shirley T]

When surnames were assigned or taken in Europe during the last millennium it wasn't impossible for legitimate sons of the same man to wind up with a different surname and still each could have shared his with others with no known relationship. The purpose originally was not to identify a man as a member of a family but just to better identify him, frequently for taxation purposes. Too many men with the same given name in the same town or village and they had to have a way of sorting them out. So the root person of someone else with your surname will not necessarily be the root person of your surname.

Now we are probably all related if we go back far enough The law of probability would indicate that whether you accept literally the account of creation in Genesis or not. You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents and it keeps doubling each generation you go back and begins to pyramid big time. Get back to the first part of the 2nd millennium and most people can by the time they get back to their 20 something great grandparents(can't remember the exact number). That would be 20 something greats in front of grandparents. If each were a different person they would outnumber the population of the world at that time. One of the big mistakes people make when they start their family history is to try and trace their surname. In genealogy we don't trace surnames we trace ancestors who just happened to have the surname.
The spellings of surnames will frequently change as people go back as get back a few centuries and most people were illiterate and how their name was spelled depended a lot on how some official or clerk understood the name and wrote it down on a record. Most in England, for instance, had a surname by the 14th century. Still in many cases it was a couple of more centuries before the same surname was passed down to subsequent generations. Because of DNA studies many biologist believe the whole human race started with one female they call Mitochondrial Eve. So far they haven't discovered our first father with DNA yet.

So you can be related to someone on the other side of the world that has your surname and you might not have any known proof of your relationship to someone who lives down the street from you with your surname.

[Ted Pack]

Sometimes. Most of the people named Cady who live in the USA descend from Nicholas Cady, who was born within 10 years of 1620 in England and died in 1712 in Massachusetts or Connecticut. Most of the people named Pack in the USA descend from one of three men, who may or may not have been related.

Surnames come from four main places:

Occupation: Smith, Carpenter, Fisher, Baker, Cook. Lots of Germans named "Zimmerman" changed it to "Carpenter" in the USA, because that's what "Zimmerman" means. Lots of Germans, Russians, etc. named "Smith" in their language changed it to the English "Smith" in the USA. A Carpenter from Yorkshire and one from Shropshire would not be close. A Carpenter from Hamburg would probably not be related to a Carpenter from Hampshire, unless you went back to 14th cousin. (I've read that all Europeans, and by extension all white people, are 14th cousins or closer. I have my doubts.)

Father: Johnson, Peterson, Williamson, Williams, Wilson . . .; Again, people sometimes translated the name from their language to English. And, again, someone named Johnson from Italy wouldn't be close to someone named Johnson from Ireland.

Physical characteristic: Little, Armstrong, Black . . .; See above re translations.

Where they lived: General places, like Rivers, Lake, Green, Bank, Marsh, Meadows; specific places like York, London, Scott .... Note that the specific ones were usually people who came from there and moved away. Back in the middle ages, when there were too many Michaels to keep track of easily, you wouldn't call all of the Michaels in York "Michael of York", but you might, in Shropshire, have one "Michael of York", if he came from there, along with Michael Baker, Michael Armstrong, and Michael Meadows. Everyone named "York" or "London" or "Hampshire" might be a little closer related than all those Smiths, but, again, they probably moved from the place of their surname in the middle ages, so the relationship would be distant.