What's in a name?

When Sweden scored the other night, I heard the commentator saying "....son" had scored. I presumed it was Larsson. The goalscorer turned out to be Hansson. "Another 'son'", I thought. The 'son' here literally means a son. Such surnames are patronymic- named after the father. What immediately comes to mind is the Norse father-son duo of Erik the Red and Leif Eriksson. But present-day seemingly patronymic names are not, in fact, patronymic. Except Iceland (if you consider Iceland a part of Scandinavia), the other Scandinavian countries have forbidden the use of patronymic names for quite some time. Surnames became permanent when the more usual family name system was brought in- new generations would keep the patronymic of the head of the family at that time. The result of such a law in Denmark was that two thirds of Danes still carry a limited selection of names such as Nielsen, Jensen, and Hansen. (Danish patronymic surnames end with 'sen').

Now, a new law allows a return to the Viking tradition of patronymics. Instead of maintaining a single last name across generations, in this system each generation of children is given a last name that consists simply of the father's or mother's first name with the suffix "son" or "datter" (daughter) added on. More on this here.

P.S.: I wonder why many Poles have surnames '....ski'. Some more on this later :D