Preface To Sheep: I Once Dated A Shepherd

Anyway, that was her last name.

Last names are strange things.  There was a time when most people didn't have last names.  As this website says, "Tracing the origins of surnames can help us gleam more insights into the lives of our ancestors. Early last names were often linked to occupations, geographical features, nicknames, or even a combination of their mother’s & father’s name."

My last name - which is Dickerson - according to this site - is basically the same as "Richardson."  But check this:

"This interesting surname is a patronymic form of Dick, itself a pet form of the given name Richard. Richard originated from a rare Anglo-Saxon name 'Ricehard,' meaning rule-hard. An 8th Century English Kinglet of this name died at Lucca, in Italy, on his way to Rome, & is there still venerated as St. Ricardo, but it was the Old German Ricohard that was spread by two pre-Conquest Dukes among the Normans, & brought by them to England. A Ricard is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086; but the softer French Richard prevailed, with several short forms, such as Rich, Rick, Dick, Hick, Dickie, Richie, etc.. The surname is first recorded in the mid 14th Century. One, John Dykonesson, is noted in the register of the Freemen of the City of York (1388). In the modern idiom the surname has many variant spellings including Dickenson, Dickinson, Dickeson, Dickison, Dickason, etc."

Just taking a brief moment to emphasize this sentence, which I promise this is a coincidence I did not know this when I started yammering about last names:

"On November 9th 1629, Dorithy Dickerson married William Sheapheard at St. Giles Cripplegate, London."

Boom!  Connection!  It concludes:

"The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Dykounson, which was dated 1366, Subsidy Rolls of Lancashire, during the reign of King Edward 111, 'The Father of the Navy,' 1327 - 1377. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to 'develop' often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling."

If you can tell any disappointment from me in any of this, well, there is.  The German word for "fat" is dick.  German has the -er ending (I suppose English took it from there) to indicate comparative adjectives, so "dicker" can mean "fatter" or "thicker."  The German word for "son" is Sohn, so I kind of assumed that - possibly because I have German relatives on my mother's side, even though my last name is my dad's name - the name had Germanic roots.  Therefore, my last name could be translated as "fat man's son."  Or even better, "fatter dude's kid."

But nope.  At some point some ancestor of mine was named Richard, possibly referred to as "Dick," & I'm descended from one of his kids.

Not coincidentally, my father, whose first name was Everett, was called Dick by everyone, including my mother.  So in a very real way, I am the son of Dick.

This has nothing to do with sheep.  Except that weird bit where a Dickerson married a Sheapheard.  It was just a rabbit hole I found myself in just now.