Research on Name Change

For my research topic I decided to look into the subject on why people decided to change, and the benefits of doing so. The reason this topic intrigues me is due to the fact that my ancestors changed their name from Larsson to Tangren. At first I thought that I'd look into why immigrants decide to change their name, but my studies widened out to name change in general.

I discovered that my family did not change their name upon moving to America, like I thought that they did before. But it was changed a couple centuries before hand. Sweden had a problem with having repetitive surnames. One's surname did not stay the same from generation to generation, but changed each time. When one was born, their surname was their father's first name, added with either Son or Dotter, meaning son or daughter. Lars, who had a son, gave the son a surname of Larsson. But soon half of Sweden was having the same surname.

Sweden had to abandon the patronymic system of creating a surname. And many of the inhabitants were given a new name by the government, especially if that someone was in the military. And by doing so instead of losing one's identity, when was more given one.

But then outside of Sweden many immigrants found favor in changing their surnames. This gave great benefit when integrating into a new society. Studies have actually shown that when immigrants migrated to a new country, those who decided to change their name had a greater success with both getting a great job and earning more money than those who decided upon keeping their surnames.

The subject goes into great depth, and their is still defiantly much that I do not know about it. But it was a really fun subject to study as a crafted together a research paper. Not only did get to read from experiences from immigrants, but I also received more knowledge on my own ancestry and why I have the last name that I do. Though writing research papers isn't the most fun thing to occupy my time, I was entertained with diving into the research itself.