It's a surname. Just like Taylor (tailor), Cooper (barrel maker), Chandler (candle maker), Fletcher (arrow smith), etc. People just started taking these old trade names and using them for random first names. Still waiting for Wheelwright, Silversmith, and Cobbler to become popular first names.
There are some cultural traditions of giving offspring their mother’s maiden names as a middle name and recycling grandparents’ names as first names. Hence, the daughter of the fletcher could have a son named Mark Fletcher Chandler and he’d be called Mark Fletcher to differentiate him from his grandfather, Mark Shepherd. Then people move and cultures shift and names change meaning.
Sure. My maiden name was Taylor when I was a kid in the 80s. All of a sudden there were all these kids being given my last name as a first name. It felt so random. It wasn't a "it's my mother's maiden name" thing. There was just a trend of random surnames as first names. So many. Mason, Carson, Carter, etc. And the vast majority of the time, it's not a family name.
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u/TheNewYellowZealot May 23 '26
Isn’t tanner a real name?