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Pretty sure that if they're in English, it happened around the time William the Conqueror did the Domesday book, the first census of England.



But this was also common in Germany, France, and Italy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Occupational_surnames

So it's very likely it is just a normal thing humans tend to do. Except I don't know much European history so I can't tell if those places got it from England


right, I'm just putting a date on it for anyone wondering about when it happened in English. I have no idea when people got last names in those countries. Also they didn't have different last names before they got these names, they just didn't have last names at all.




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