Updated March,
2001 Updated March,
2001
Very little is certain in the world of genealogical research, but we can be certain about this much: our ancestors in Sweden were known, at least for the space of a few generations, by the surname Sköld. Later, when they moved to this country, they changed the family surname several times, ending up with the rather unusual surname of Shult. Why did they change it? Was it a conscious choice, or the result of a typo during naturalization or immigration processing? If it was deliberate, why Shult? These questions have puzzled members of the family for some time.
Church records in Skepperstad, Sweden show that the name of at
least some of our ancestors was originally Sköld. A partial
lineage before coming to the United States can be summarized as:
John Sköld - Johanna Sofia Heasson | | Samuel Sköld - Lisa Jonsdotter | | Hans Johann Sköld - Coisa Marie Jonsdotter
In Sweden, families tended to use more than one surname in their day to day life up until the middle of the 19th century. In addition to the family surname, members of a family often used a patronymic surname formed of the fathers first name with -son or -dotter added on. Women also kept their maiden names after marriage. Therefore, one man might be known as Hons Skold in one document (family name), and Hons Samuelson (patronymic - son of Samuel) in another. His wife might be known as both Marie Skold (married name), Marie Johanssen (family name prior to marriage) and Marie Jonsdotter (patronymic maiden name). It can make researching records from this time very confusing, but it also offers some explanations to seeming inconsistencies in our family history, and possible explanations for some of the choices the family made.
A source on Swedish genealogy states conclusively that Skold
was, in fact, a functional name indicating that members of our
family served in low-level military positions, probably as
shield-bearers, or foot soldiers:
"Already in the 1500's the custom began giving soldiers special soldier names, which could be plant or animal names, and, towards the late 1700's, it was common to assign a geographical name that alluded to the ROTE (a section of land whose inhabitants were responsible for equipping and maintaining one allotment soldier) the soldier served. During the 1800's the soldier names in certain areas sounded more warlike, for instance, Dunder, Svard and Skold (rumble, sword and shield. )"
- Excerpted from "My Book of Rememberances" by Christopher Foisy
A Little More on
Swedish Naming TraditionsHowever, it's clear that even before the emigration to the US, our surname history was complicated. Some documents show the surname of Hons and Samuel as Skold, some show Hons with a surname of Samuelson and Samuel with the surname Jonasson, and all of the women have multiple names depending on where you look.
Mr. John Kallen, himself Swedish, sheds further light on this phenomenon of Swedish culture:
Like people in many other cultures, Scandinavians give patronymic surnames to their children during their early history. Sven the son of Leif would be called Sven Leifsson, and his sister Hilda would be Hilda Leifsdotter ("dotter" being the word for "daughter" in Scandinavian). The practice was universally spread throughout the Scandinavian countries, and is still carried on in Iceland today. For instance, the first female Icelandic president was called Vigdis Finnborgardottír: Vigdis, daughter of Finnborg. Indeed, immigrants to Iceland follow this custom, so you will find people with names like Ibrahim Mohammedssón in Iceland too.
As population grew, however, combinatorical limitations (limited number of names) led to many people ended up with the same surname. The "Andersson" section of the Stockholm white pages is about 1 centimeter thick! Imagine the situation in a small village where there were a lot of Karls and Anders ("Charles" and "Andrew" -- common given names): there would be a large population of people with the surnames Karlsson and Andersson -- and often with the same given name to add to the confusion.
To keep all these identically named people apart, it became common to refer to the different Lars Anderssons as, say, Lars the Farmer, Lars Who-Lives-In-The-Forest, and Lars the Mute. These newly minted names were more nicknames than actual "official" names, and weren't passed on to children (who instead became Larssons and Larsdotters).
In the Swedish army during the 1600's, soldiers were not adressed by their given names, so the need to keep the large number of Anderssons, Johanssons, and Svenssons apart became especially pressing. The individial soldiers would be given different names, like Rask, Stark, Modig, and Svensk ("Quick", "Strong", "Brave" and "Swede") that reflected their behaviour in battle. When the soldiers returned from service, they proudly started using the new surname in place of the old patronymic, and passed the name on to their children. To this day, many of these surnames survive in common usage.
But not every Swede joined the army, so another solution for the "namespace pollution" was needed. The Swedish noble families had surnames like Oxenstierna and Silversten (literally: "Ox-star" and "Silverstone"), and the middle-class in the towns started coining names in a similar fashion in emulation. This is the origin of the numerous surnames of the type [nature-element1][nature-element2], like Grönkvist, Söderberg, and Lindström ("green-twig", "south-mountain", and "linden-stream" respectively.)
Goodness, is this name collision ever true in our family tree!
For an example, look at the respective grandparents of Hons and
Mary Shult. Of the four sets of grandparents, each and every one
of the four men has the same last name, Jonasson. The
females in that line of the tree abound with the surname
Jonsdotter, Andersdotter, Mansdotter. It gets quite confusing but
it does allow us to begin interpreting the multiple names we see
in the record. Knowing the rules, it almost begins to make sense.
Now we come to the emigration. What happened? Several books on
Swedish genealogy made it clear that Swedish emigrants very
frequently changed their surnames upon arriving in the United
States, sometimes to Americanized versions of their original
names (such as Johnson from Johannson), but sometimes to entirely
different names. One source states:
"It was also common that Swedes, when they emigrated, changed their names or changed the spelling to ease the pronunciation in English. In 1901, a namelaw was approved that made it mandatory for new family names to be submitted and approved by the authorities, but prior to this, any family name could be taken as long as it wasn't a noble's name."
- Excerpted from "My Book of Rememberances" by Christopher Foisy
I've seen this stated in several other books on Swedish genealogy. Families tended to either Americanize their names, as in turning Johannson into Johnson, or they picked entirely unrelated names.
Did we, then, deliberately change the name? Yes, it's likely. In the course of my research in 1998, I located two different oral records of what had happened, one from the son of a man who might have known or spoken to Hons -- his grandson, Riley. These two different branches of the family have passed down an explanation, through the generations, of why our surname changed. Both stories match, and both fit in perfectly with the traditions outlined above.
The first story comes through the relatives of Riley Shult, the oldest son of Frank Edward Shult and grandson of Hons, who (presumably) made the decision to change the name. Riley's son Jack says:
"I don't know how true it is but members of the family have said that Hans Johann Sköld changed the name to Shult because he thought it was more American than Swedish."
- Correspondence, January 1998
The second story comes from my aunt, Wanda Shult, who is the daughter of Carroll, and Hons' great granddaughter.
"My mother told me that after the family came to America, they thought they should have a more American-sounding name, and that they first decided on Samuelson. I don't know whether they actually changed it, or just talked about it. Then they decided that still didn't sound American enough, and changed the name to Shult. Everywhere we've lived people have thought it was a German name, spelling it Schult or Schultz! So much for Americanizing names! I think they should have left it Sköld."
- Correspondence, February, 1998
Based on all of this information, I think we can safely believe
that the name change was deliberate. We know that in addition to
changing their surnames, Hans and Coysa Marie also
"Americanized" their first names to Hons and Mary, and
that several other members of the family in the same generation
also went by John instead of Johann, etc. The persistance of the
story that Hons decided, possibly along with his siblings, to
rename the family can most likely be believed.
A Final Note - The
Missing PieceEven with all this supposition, the question remains -- why Shult? Why did they take their first attempt of Samuelson (a perfectly respectable Swedish patronymic name that was also acceptable in the United States) and change it again to Shult?
My friend Jacki, a student of all things Swedish, provided the missing piece one day. "Well, Sköld is pronounced almost like Shult, in Swedish," she said. What's this? A look into various linguistic sources confirmed this fact. Sk, a variation of sj in Swedish, is pronounced somewhat like an "sh" in English, although "further back in the throat".
This means that our original family name, Sköld, sounded almost like Shult when said in its native language. Therefore, Shult is much less a "made up" name than we thought. Perhaps the family decided to go with this spelling as a way to American-ize the existing family name rather than starting over with a new one, Samuelson. It's an interesting thought.
For more on Swedish pronounciation, see this site: http://www.hhs.se/isa/swedish/chap9.htm