If there's a marker for Nils Andersson and his son Mårten, should I assume Mårten's surname is Andersson or Nilsson? Is there an approximate date when taking the father's name as a surname fell out of use?

Depending on when he was born, -Everthing that I have been told by my Swedish relatives, it changed around the 1860.

So if he was born before 1860 - it would be Andersson.

Here is some information from Genline.com web site that may be of some help.

" Swedish Names
The patronymic naming system was in common use up to the end of the 19th century within Sweden. Between 90 and 95% of the population used the patronymic naming system. A child was the son of or the daughter of the father. Thus if the father’s name is Sven Johansson, his son’s name might be Magnus Svensson or Magnus the son of Sven. Likewise, a daughter might be named Kerstin Svensdotter or Kerstin the daughter of Sven. When a woman married, she did not adopt her husband’s name upon marriage but kept her patronymic.

Surnames or family names were used by the nobility, the clergy and some townspeople. The nobility had special noble name. Less than 1% of the population was nobility.

Many of the clergy adopted names with Greek or Latin endings such as "ander" or "ius". Examples of names used by the clergy are Fallander and Morelius.

Many townspersons adopted family names often called "nature names". These "nature names" usually would consist of two parts of nature such as Dalberg. Dal is valley and berg is mountain.

Soldiers were often given military names while in the military. Military names sometimes represented a personal quality like Rapp (quick), a military term or could be associated with the place where the person served. When leaving the military service, some soldiers did keep their military name while many returned to using their patronymic name."

Good luck.

I am doing research on a relative whose name as recorded at death here in the U.S. was "Charles Henry Rosenqvist." He was born in Stockholm in 1853. He and his family emigrated to the U.S. sometime between 1889 and 1893. According to family lore, Charles would tell his daughters a story that the King of Sweden gave him a cigar in recognition of some sort of favour he had performed. This was likely either Charles XV (reigned 8 Jul 1859 – 18 Sep 1872) or Oscar II (reigned 18 Sep 1872 – 8 Dec 1907).

At this point I'm mostly trying to find his pre-Anglicized name, perhaps with the hope of finding some military records to document him better. Noting the above reply that hinted at names being given to those in military service, is there any likelihood that one of his names is one given to him in the military? I would guess, at least, that his first name was always Karl (Charles). Why would he have a middle name of Henrik (Henry)? Is that normal for Swedish naming conventions?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Oh, and does "Rosenqvist" actually mean anything? I tried an English Swedish dictionary, along with Bing Translator, and found nothing too useful (other than "Rosen" seems to pertain to roses)

Charles Henry Rosenqvist's swedish name would be Carl Henrik Rosenqvist, possibly spelled Karl, Henric, Hendric, Rosenquist or Rosenkvist. It is also possible that he used a patronymic name (his fathers first name+s+son) instead of Rosenqvist, or used a totally different name.

Rosenqvist literally means "twig of roses". It could be a soldier's name given to a man was staioned in a place starting with "rose" or a civilian name adopted anyone thought it sounded nice. In the 1800's it was fairly normal to adopt a new surname if you moved to a town or took up a trade. Before 1900, there was no special registration needed to change your name. You simply told people what you wanted to be called and that was it.

Even today, conventions on given names are no way near as formalised in Sweden as in the US. A person can have any number of given names and use them however they want after registration. Personally I have three but normally use the last one.

I'm not sure Carl Henrik came from Stockholm city. I checked the Rotemansarkiv, an online database covering most of the parishes of Stockholm between 1878-1926, and the only Rosenquist I found belonged to the noble family Rosenqvist af Åkershult. (One name consisting of three words, noble families had even weirder names than commoners).

It would help if you have the exact year Carl Henric immigrated and the names and ages of other members of his family born in Sweden. Then you could use databases like Emigranten or Emibas to find where in Sweden they came from. Swedish churchbooks and censuses are organised by parish, and to search military records you would at least need to know the "län" to know which company the man served in.

Happy hunting

I will say that the main info I have only states that he was born in Stockholm, but I do not know that he remained there.

Thank you for the additional info on the meaning of Rosenqvist. One thing I failed to mention was that he served in the cavalry, and it was there that he did the favour for the king that got him the cigar. In looking up Swedish cavalry regiments, I noticed that there was a personal regiment of King Karl XV (the "Husarregementet Konung Karl XV" which was in service from 1860–1882, a perfect fit timeframe-wise for my ancestor) which may explain how he came to be in a position to do a favour for the king himself. There are only five other cavalry regiments from this time that he could possibly served in, so at least its a relatively small list to work with.

Unfortunately I don't think I have an exact year that he immigrated, but I will ask my uncle and see if he found out anything more. He did have a wife at the time he immigrated, Gertrude Louise Rosenqvist, but their daughter was born in the U.S. in 1894.

Chuck!! It can be that his name was a military name! My surname is a militaryname. My ancestor was a soldier who had 2 change from Olsson 2 Nord but check also ddss u might just get lucky