“Back in the days before Napoleon conquered a good bit of Europe most common persons only had one name. Jan, Dirk, Pieter, etc. The Dutch tradition was for the father to name the first son after his own deceased father, or if granddad was still around, the dead great-grandfather. Something similar was done for daughters and subsequent sons.
Villages were very small and, as everyone knew everyone else, there was no need for further specificity. If there was confusion, some modifier was attached to the name: in our case “de jonghe”, which translates as “the younger,” was used to denote the younger Tom, Dick or Harry of the family.
When Napoleon came along and wanted to make lists of all of his new subjects for taxing purposes, he decreed that everyone would be given a surname. Couldn’t throw the wrong man in prison for tax evasion, after all! When individuals went before the French registrar they had to come up with something to use as a last-name. Some chose a name related to their place of origin or residence (van de Waal–of the Waal river) or their profession (Kuyper–cooper, aka barrel and bucket maker.) Our ancestors must have been an unimaginative lot, as the guys simply adopted the local tag-line used to keep them straight–“the younger”.
You can see that every little place could have a John the Younger, Pete the Younger, Hank the Younger, etc., and that none of them would necessarily be related to the other, let alone be related to the Jan de Jonghe, Pieter de Jonghe or Hendrick de Jonghe from the next village down the road. De Jongs sprang up from all over–it may be the most common surname in The Netherlands, akin to Smith or Jones in English.
Soooooooo, if you’re doing De Jong research you’ve really got to be careful. You may think that a listed family is yours because the first names are the same or similar, but that can be nothing more than coincidence. Good documentation from records is essential to verify a connection.
Let’s not mention the confusion caused by the De Young thing.
Also, don’t let anyone sell you an expensive Coat of Arms for the de Jong family. Most of us spring from just plain folks–only a few of “the youngers” would have been of noble birth and eligible for the honor.”
