Larsson

Larsson is a sentence rather than a name: Lars, and the -s and -son that make him somebody's father. Inside a parish that told the clerk everything he needed; outside it, it told a university nothing. The Catholic clergy took to Latin first, in the 15th century, writing Herr before the given name and a Latinised form of the patronymic after it. The plain form had already reached high office without any of that: Olof Larsson, archbishop, died in 1438, and Bengt Larsson, bishop of Linköping, in 1440. Two Larssons show what that looked like from underneath: men born to a patronymic who took a second name on top of it and kept both.

Daniel Larsson Wallerius was born in 1630 in Högby parish on Öland. His father was the rural dean and parish priest Laurentius Erici Wallerius, and that one line contains the whole system: the Swedish Lars turned into Laurentius, the father's name Erik put into the Latin genitive as Erici, and a Latin surname bolted on the end. His mother was Katarina, born Ungia, daughter of Johannes Petri Ungius. The women of such families took the feminine form of the Latin, which is why Ungius produced a Katarina Ungia. When Wallerius married in 1659 it was to Margareta Schomera, daughter of Petrus Schomerus and Margareta Henriksdotter: a Latin name in its masculine and feminine forms, and beside them a plain Swedish patronymic on the bride's own mother.

The bishop's own name is the neatest evidence of all. He wrote himself Daniel Larsson Wallerius. Larsson because his father was Lars, and Lars is what Laurentius becomes in Swedish. One man stood at the head of both names, rendered one way in the parish and another in the lecture hall, and his son carried the Swedish half and the Latin half in a single string.

He matriculated at Uppsala University in 1651 and took his master of philosophy in 1657. Ordained at Kalmar in 1658, he became lecturer in Greek at the Kalmar gymnasium in the same year. In 1660 he was recommended to hold the preachership at Kalmar Castle alongside his schoolmaster's post, and he held the two together.

The rest came quickly. Court preacher in 1668, dean of the cathedral at Gothenburg in 1671, consecrated bishop in the diocese of Gothenburg on 12 May 1678. He took his doctorate in theology in 1680, and at that year's Riksdag sat on the Great Commission. A boy from an Öland parsonage had reached a bishop's chair and a seat in the machinery of the realm, still signing himself the son of a man called Lars.

The war against Denmark between 1675 and 1679 brought a political turn, and Wallerius is remembered for what he did with it. On 10 April 1678 Karl XI issued directives for changes to the church and school system. Danish books were to go, Swedish parish clerks were to be appointed, and Swedish ceremonies, Swedish clerical dress and Swedish preaching were commanded. Carrying that through the diocese fell to the new bishop, and it became the work of his episcopate.

The resistance was heavy. At the Riksdag of 1680 the clergy of Bohuslän asked to be allowed to keep their old ceremonies. Wallerius got his support from an unexpected quarter, the clergy of northern Bohuslän, who belonged to the superintendency of Karlstad and who, on the provincial governor's initiative, declared for the Swedish church order. At the clergy meeting of September 1685 the proposal for uniformity that the bishop had laid before them was adopted unanimously.

Winning the diocese sharpened the quarrel with his own cathedral city. At the Riksdag of 1680 Wallerius argued that the magistrate of Gothenburg had acted unlawfully in shutting him out of a proper inspection of the persons and affairs attached to the cathedral and the hospital. In 1688 the Crown settled it, and settled it against him: the churches and hospital of Gothenburg would continue to be administered under the magistrate.

He was a zealous and forceful head of his diocese to the end. He died on his seat farm at Sävenäs on 20 February 1689 and lies buried in the old church at Örgryte, a Latin surname on a Swedish grave, over a patronymic that had started him off as nobody in particular.

Welam Larsson Zeppenfeldt was born on 14 December 1679 on the Ramshyttan ironworks property at Ramsberg in Västmanland; the parish books called him Wilhelm. His father was Lars Welamsson Zeppenfeldt, a bergsman, one of the mine-owning farmers of the ore country, and a nämndeman or lay assessor of the district court. His mother was Margareta Didriksdotter. His grandfather was Welam Johansson (Zeppenfeldt), district judge and member of the Riksdag, and the family counted a Heinrich Zeppenfeld among its kin.

Read the three men in order and the mechanism is visible: Welam Johansson, then Lars Welamsson, then Welam Larsson. The patronymic rebuilds itself at every birth as the given names Welam and Lars alternate down the line, while Zeppenfeldt, which is no Swedish word, sits above it and never moves. Wallerius made his second name in a lecture hall out of Latin. This one came down a mining family with an ironworks and a seat on the district bench, and it did not displace the patronymic underneath it for three generations.

He owned a bergsmanshemman, a bergsman's holding, at Ramshyttan in Ramsberg, and served as a sexman, one of the lay officers of the parish. In 1738 and 1739 he sat in the Riksdag of the Estates as delegate for the hundred of Linde and Ramsberg. His grandfather had sat in the Riksdag before him and his father on the district court, so the household had been sending men to public benches for three generations by the time he took his place.

He married twice: first Margareta Larsdotter, who died in 1719, daughter of Lars Andersson at Östra Löa, himself a bergsman and a district judge; then Anna Ersdotter Ramberg, who died in 1773, daughter of the member of the Riksdag Erik Persson (Ramberg). At least sixteen children came of the two marriages. He died at Ramsberg on 27 December 1750.

The second names are the exception, and the Swedish record keeps a handful of them in plain sight. Erik Larsson Sparre, 1550 to 1600, was chancellor and a member of the Council of the Realm, and Jöran Larsson Sparre, 1530 to 1586, councillor to a prince. Anders Larsson Höök, 1637 to 1687, was a nobleman and an ironworks owner. Greger Larsson, born in the 1580s and dead in 1654, wrote history under the name Gregorius Borastus, and Stefan Muraeus Larsson, about 1600 to 1675, was a parish priest thought to have translated hymns. A few let the patronymic go entirely: the writer Anders Kilian, 1869 to 1953, had been Anders Larsson.

What the country kept was the plain form. On 31 December 2012 Sweden held 124,011 Larssons, 583 Larsons, 88 Larzons and 4 Larzsons, 124,686 people in all, and the sixth commonest surname in the kingdom. It sits on the painter and interior designer Carl Larsson, 1853 to 1919, and on the journalist and crime writer Stieg Larsson without meaning anything different in either case. Latin got a bishop into a cathedral and a German name got a bergsman into the Riksdag, but neither was ever going to outnumber a word that simply said whose son a man was.