e first man who
handed on the name _Wilson_ (or _Willson_, as it is still sometimes
spelt) was himself the "son of Will." Any one can think of many names
of this kind--_Williamson_, _Davidson_, _Adamson_, etc. Sometimes the
founder of a family had taken his name from his mother. This was the
origin of names like _Margerison_ ("Marjorie's son") and _Alison_
("Alice's son"). This was a very common way of inventing surnames.

The Norman _Fitz_ meant "son of," and the numerous names beginning
with _Fitz_ have this origin. _Fitzpatrick_ originally meant the "son
of Patrick," _Fitzstephen_ the "son of Stephen," and so on. The Irish
prefix _O'_ has the same meaning. The ancestor of all the O'Neills was
himself the son of _Neill_. The Scandinavian _Nillson_ is really the
same name, though it sounds so different. The Scotch _Mac_ has the
same meaning, and so have the Welsh words _map_, _mab_, _ap_, and
_ab_.

One very interesting way of making surnames was to take them from the
trade or occupation of the founder of the family. Perhaps the
commonest of English surnames is _Smith_. And the word for _Smith_ is
the commonest surname in almost every country of Europe. In France we
have _Favier_.

The reason for this is easy to see. The smith, or man who made iron
and other metals into plough-shares and swords, was one of the most
important of all the workers in the early days when surnames were
being made. There were many smiths, and John the Smith and Tom the
Smith easily became John Smith and Tom Smith, and thus had a surname
to pass on to their families.

As time went on there came to be many different kinds of smiths. There
was the smith who worked in gold, and was called a "goldsmith," from
which we get the well-known surname _Goldsmith_, the name of a great
English writer. Then there was the "nail smith," from which trade came
the name _Nasmith_; the "sickle smith," from which came _Sixsmith_;
the "shear smith," which gave us _Shearsmith_--and so on.

In mediaeval England the manufacture of cloth from the wool of the
great flocks of sheep which fed on the pasture lands of the
monasteries and other great houses, was the chief industry of the
nation. This trade of wool-weaving has given us many surnames, such as
_Woolmer_, _Woolman_, _Carder_, _Kempster_, _Towser_, _Weaver_,
_Webster_, etc. Some of these referred to the general work of
wool-weaving and others to special branches.

Any child can think in a moment of severa