When you family name dies out!

[Andrew Tarr]

I am the only male descendant of my paternal grandfather, and I only have two daughters who have married and changed their surnames, so this Tarr line has stopped.  That grandfather had a brother who I think may have kept the name alive in Dublin.

[Malcolm33]

    For me it matters not.   Yes I have a grandson, son of my son and he may continue our line, but for now is still in his teens.   But there are stacks of cousins with our name and I think of myself as much of a Draffan and Grant as my paternal line.   Then again, who will I be in the next life?

    In time the practice of continuing the male surname may cease and the female name be the one to pass on, as happens for a generation or two with the Spanish.

     No matter what the name, each and every ancestor and future forebear descendants are part of us.

[Bearnan]

We lost our beloved father on 12th March at the age of 97, he was an only son with no sons himself , so now our family name has died out.  He had a long life but wanted to reach 100, a fighter to the end.

[Ayashi]

My grandfather was one of five brothers but nevertheless only one male child between them and I think he only had daughters? So with him the surname goes. That said, all of my surnames are common as muck and my legal surname technically isn't my biological one anyway (my paternal grandfather's mother ran off with the lodger and her last child, my grandfather, took his name despite not being his biological child) so it doesn't concern me much.

I do use my mother's maiden surname as an online alias mind you.

[andrewalston]

My surname only appeared in 1891 when my great grandparents married. Alston is what the clergyman wrote down, but it should have been Alstead.

They had a string of girls but only two boys, one of whom died, unmarried, at the end of the Great War.

That leaves my grandfather, father, my brother and myself as their only male descendants, though one of my nieces has hyphenated her Alston with her husband's surname.

A grand total of 18 people in the branch have used the surname.

So, a very small, independent, branch, and close to extinction.

[pinefamily]

While there are some more distant male Pine's to carry on the name, there aren't many from my grandfather down. This is despite him having 9 boys. There have been only 7 male grandchildren, and out of those another 7 in the next generation, including one son of my own.
It's all a lottery, both in terms of numbers and sex of any offspring.

[JACK GEE]

An interesting topic and one that i am familia with as my mothers maiden name was Herweg. My Great G-father came to Australia from Woltwiesche in Germany and arrived in Hobsons Bay in 1872. Frederich Herweg married Elizabeth Bond from Ararat and they had 13 children mostly boys. There are no Herweg males from this line today. So they bred themselves out of existence within 3 generations!

Cheers
Jack Gee

[jaybelnz]

I have a friend who was adopted, and has been looking for a birth mother for several years!  Do you think a DNA test might help??

[clairec666]

Out of my four grandparents, only one of their surnames hasn't died out in our immediate family.

My own surname is coming to a dead end, unless my sister or cousin decide to give their maiden name to their children.

My maternal grandmother had four brothers, so it would seem likely that their family name would have survived. But no - they had six children between them, but only two of them boys. Only one of them had children.... two girls. So in two generations, the name has gone.