Ever realize that Ben Johnson is a shortened version of Ben, John’s son?

In many cases they occurred without people realizing they were last names. Case in point above, or with any name ending in son - Smithson (son of the Smith), Davidson, Jackson…

You can imagine the exchange:

“Oh look, there’s Ben, John’s son!”

…and eventually poor Ben became known as Ben Johnson.

It works in tons of other languages too - think of the -sen in Nordic languages, or the -yan / -ian in Armenian last names - both of these mean “son of”. So Manoukian is actually son of Manouk.

And then of course there’s places - and in my opinion nowhere is this more evident than in French. One of the most common last names in France is Dupont - which is the shortened form of du pont, meaning from the bridge.

So Francois Dupont is thus named simply because, once upon a time, an ancestor of his chose to live near a bridge.

Source : https://www.quora.com/When-were-surnames-first-used?no_redirect=1