chicken/egg... Question: Where did the tens of millions of last names come from? We get our last names from our parents & grandparents etc, but the further you look back, the smaller the world's population. At some point, population was only in the hundreds/thousands so... wtf?
A large portion (in the west at least) come from either a parent as in O'Brian or Michaelson, a job like Smith or Tanner, or a region/topological feature like Rivers or Marsh.
Orphans, lots of nameless orphans 🤪
I had that thought as well. After the last reset, there were definitely orphan trains and baby incubator stores all over the place, but there still had to be some sort of methodology they used to think all those names up. Grrrrreat, another f*kn rabbit hole..
