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Titel: SV: Charles Matthew Strandberg
Skrivet av: Anders Väppling skrivet 2018-04-24, 21:14
Thanks Anders.

It's quite a puzzle, isn't it?

To your knowledge, did it happen often that people took different surnames?
Yes, it usually isn't this hard to find traces of a person. But let's work with the clues we got from the document and see if anything interesting can be found!




And it was quite common in Sweden that people changed their surnames. It could be an almost forced surname change during/after military service (where men would be given a soldiers name), when they moved into a densely populated city to distinguish themselves from the hundreds of other Svenssons and Karlssons, or even when they emigrated. Up until ~1901 Swedes could take any name they wanted, with some restrictions of course. If you were born Svensson then you could simply change it to Strandberg - I don't think the state was even involved, you simply told the priest what your new surname was and he would add it to the records. (But I must admit I haven't researched this fully so there might have been some sort of process involved).


In my own family history I have quite a few surname changes related to the military. But also in connection to an ancestor learning a profession (such as becoming a blacksmith). The vast majority however are still the usual -son and -dotter (daughter) surnames, since most of them were farmers and crofters.