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Author: mdjonson1
Surnames:
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.carlson/1331.1.1.1.2.1/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
Hi Michelle -
I probably can't help with the photo, I'm afraid. However, as far as
Matilda's name goes, I can explain. Most Swedes up until the last years of the 19th
century used patronymic names, made from the father's first name (usually) a
possessive "s" "son" for the boys or "dotter" for the
girls. The word son in Swedish means the same as it does in English; the word dotter
means daughter. So the son of someone named Sven Nilsson might be named Anders Svensson,
while a daughter might be Matilda Svensdotter. If Anders in turn had children, their last
names under this system would be Andersson and Andersdotter (this is the typical
exception: where the first name ends in "s", the possessive "s" is
omitted).
In some cases, people adopted surnames in place of or in addition to patronymic names.
Typically, this happened among certain social groups, such as artisans and craftsmen.
This also happened earlier in the cities than in rural areas. Wahlgren is a typical
Swedish "nature name" made from two words val (older spelling could be wal or
wahl) and gren. Val means whale and gren means branch (as in tree branch). The names
usually don't make sense; they were just put together by what sounded good together.
Carlsson would be Matilda's married name. Swedish women generally didn't change
their names when they got married (although some in the cities and higher social classes
did) before the turn of the 20th century. Svensdotter would be her patronymic name.
Wahlgren is probably an inherited surname, so her father was probably named Sven Wahlgren,
but there is an outside chance that she was married previously and adopted the Wahlgren
from her previous husband.
Hope this helps -
Mark Johnson
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