Question about 'Real' Names?

[BaMamma]

My cousin does a lot of genealogy stuff and has traced our great great great grandfather (I think) and now says we are not (for example) Smiths, but actually (for example) Morgans, because this shared ancestor was born Morgan and adopted (unofficially perhaps?) by Smiths.

Is this correct? Seems to me we've been Smiths for long enough to be Smiths! My mother took my father's name on marriage so we're BaMammas, but we're also Smiths because that's the larger family group.

I also wonder how this impacts my cousin's adopted siblings, are they 'not really' Smiths, but actually WhateverTheirMotherOrFatherWas?

Well it all depends on whether you are looking at it from the point of view of your name being your name (which it is, as you and your ancestors going back however far, were legally registered as such), or whether you are looking at your genetic history going back into the mists of time.

At the time period you are looking at, adoptions would have been informal, and it is quite likely there is some family relationship there somewhere, possibly even illegitimate.

Has your relative managed to trace the biological parents of the ancestor who was adopted? Researching that side may well throw up a family connection with the adoptive family.

Every generation you go backwards from yourself, you double the number of names, so you are just as much a part of their family trees as the one whose surname you happen to share. By the time you get to your great, great, great grandparents, there will be 32 surnames!

It’s a bit disconcerting. I had a proper Scottish clam surname growing up, that was part of our family identity, but actually after doing my family tree it turns out I should have been Smith (true, I’m not using an example name!).

But if you look at the hundreds of surnames you see on the family tree we’re a part of many many families and surnames, so we were never truly just ‘Morgans’ or ‘Smiths’ and it’s just a bunch of letters and basically irrelevant!

For you your recent family surnames represent the family and relationships you have now, so that’s more real than your ancestors and whatever surname they got landed with hundreds of years ago.

Clan not clam! Where’s the edit function hiding?

I agree I imagine your sister is thinking about genetics. I am also the same! My paternal grandfather was illegitimate. He had his mother's surname (also a Scottish clan name) so that is the name carried down. I have kept my maiden name even though married because It goes with my first name lol and I am a proud Scot.
If you think about it though there are millions of people who have their mother's name and millions more in each previous generation. In the past there would have been many informal adoptions/foundlings/illegitimate babes.
Other than DNA tests how do we really know where we came from? Maybe it is as previous poster said just a random string of letters that don't mean much really other than to our sense of belonging.

Your name is what people call you. It was very common to take on the name of people who looked after you or mentored you.

For example, Oliver Cromwell’s great grandfather Richard Cromwell was born Richard Williams. His maternal uncle, Thomas Cromwell (of Wolf Hall fame) took him into his household and trained him. Richard chose to take his uncle’s name as a mark of respect and loyalty. So that’s who he is.

Your Morgan relatives took on the surname Smith, and that’s that, they become Smiths.

Names were not always passed down in families, it was common that an apprentice would take on his (no women apprentices then) master's surname. That's why there are so many Smiths, Jones and Taylors around.

Then there is of course adoption, whether formal or not.

I'd want to know if the Smith who adopted your ancestors was a relative of the ancestor. My grandma was adopted by her older cousin for example, so they were from the same ancestral background even if the surnames ended up different. And go back far enough in the same area and everyone is related to each other anyway (I think I worked out once that I'm highly likely to be related to everyone in my town who has grandparents in that town to a distance of 8th cousins maximum).
What I'm trying to say is that I think the area that your ancestors grew up in, if it was relatively consistent over time (as most were before the 1930s) has more to do with a sense of belonging than a particular surname.

There are loads of people called Smith, Taylor, Clarke, Faulkner, Wright, Fletcher etc etc because they are occupational names, and in the times before surnames became a 'thing', it was easier to distinguish people in a locality from one another by calling them John the smith or John the falconer instead. The names stuck. In some cases becoming things like Smithson or Johnson, ie the son of John the smith. So it is often that, rather than people taking on the surname of their employer. I think that only really happened if people took on orphans as apprentices.