In fact, these names were so common that creative nicknames had to evolve to distinguish one from another. Manytraditional nicknames and derivatives emerged in the Middle Ages,including Bess, Hal, and Ellen. Others survive today only in surnames, such as Jenkins — Jenkin was a nickname for Jo...
In the period of these documents the folk of what would become Catalonia didn’t use surnames, which can be extremely frustrating when trying to distinguish them. If they use two names at all, then the second one is either their father’s, by way of identification, or a nickname or ...