TheMarketForIdeas

The Industrial Revolution unambiguously came about in the 18th century. Nevertheless, those who set the scene for this radical twist in economic thinking and industrial capacity were a contingent of artisans, labourers, merchants, lenders and workshop owners. This composite class, predominantly living in the vicinity of towns and cities, gradually thickened for centuries, before achieving critical mass. In countries most prosperous nowadays, this up-and-coming class evolved either by organic means, seemingly through a background process, or was deliberately nurtured by rulers who acknowledged the creative role this group played. It is only natural that people hailing from developing economies, as Romanians do, ponder the question: did the lack of such a pre-modern proto-capitalist elite in some places lead to the current economic divide between nations?

To provide an answer, we need to analyse the superstructure of medieval economies, which is ideally accomplished by unlocking statistical data. When monarchs first sought to increase realm centralisation – increase taxation capacity –, bureaucrats began to collect information about the number of inhabitants, their occupation and marital status. Hence, the main reason for the emergence of censuses. In this aspect, the British are the frontrunners in European space. In 1086, only a couple decades after the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book – a document that registered both the size and appraisal value of agrarian assets held by the large landholders in the English dukedoms. Its aims were, without doubt, to minimise court costs when investigating litigation, defend propriety rights and, foremost, keep the power of earls and lesser nobles in check. Since 1538, following a decree by Thomas Cromwell, chief minister of Henry VIII and forebearer of Oliver Cromwell, all English parishes began maintaining records of congregants. Brilliantly, economist Angus Maddison put these church documents together to reconstruct the GDP of British medieval regions with far greater clarity than ever before. The link between population records and national income may seem elusive at first. In the spirit of Thomas Malthus, Maddison maintains that, prior to the emergence of industrialisation, productivity surpluses primarily led almost exclusively to a surge in population – enabling extensive growth –, which prevented the growth of GDP per capita – intensive progress. According to this hypothesis, almost all inhabitants lived on the verge of subsistence, consuming food just above the caloric requirement for survival. Determining the minimum amount of grain required for survival by man allowed economists to come up with the most conservative estimates for national income at any time. This theory assumes that throughout centuries, there has been little change in living standards, with short-term variations attributed to shocks, such as good crop years and epidemics. Parish records can tell interesting stories about the economic dynamics and developments on the British Isles.

Sadly, in states with less progressed institutions, like the Romanian principalities, censuses were introduced much later. The earliest one was held in 1838, during the Organic Regulation regime (Regulamentul Organic), as the principalities were for a time Russian protectorates. The second was organised in 1859, the year the Romanian state came into being under ruler A.I. Cuza, only a few months after the Central Statistical Office was inaugurated. At first, it appears that empirical data only allows us to go back in time for two centuries, at most. Any attempt to uncover any aspects of the economic situation beyond this moment appears destined to fail. Relatively scant fiscal and commercial documents, works of chroniclers and impressions of foreign passengers can perhaps give us a flavour of what life was like in the Romanian premodern polities, but is not sufficient to capture a bird’s eye view over the economic context back then. Is there some surprising way to lift the veil of mystery and catch at least a glimpse of the five hundred years of forgotten economic life in these countries?

Paradoxically, artifacts presently hidden in plain sight can tell us quite a lot about the past. Put away the trowel and grab the telephone book instead, for we begin with the archaeology of family names. By assembling data gathered from statistical offices, national population registry offices and censuses, the website surnam.es compiled the top 350 most frequent surnames from a list of European countries, updated for year 2025. By comparing the distribution of the most common Romanian names against their counterparts from Poland, Italy and Germany, we can infer how relatively complex the Romanian society was in the preindustrial era. The three nations represent prime examples of successful economies. They are also, according to historical assessment, countries that likely presented both a more specialised labour market and a more vibrant urban life. The frequency of occupational names – also called metonyms – relative to the total names pool may suggest what proportion of society was composed of peasants involved in labour-intensive grain agriculture and, simultaneously, let us into how numerous were those with specialised occupations. In many countries, peasants lacking a distinctive occupation adopted their father’s name as surname – patronymic. They could also pick a name associated with geographical features of their environment or choose a name reminiscent of their place of origin if they came from elsewhere – toponymic. Or they could simply use their nickname. These names were useful to differentiate people in small communities like villages, where people knew one another well and making mental connections was useful. But in settlements with larger populations like cities, patronymics carried significantly less information, as it was less likely for most residents to be acquainted with someone’s father – especially due to high mobility. In some instances, occupational names taken by people did not refer to their own trade, but from that of ancestors. But this should not represent an issue, as we compare the frequency of names relative to other countries and regions, where similar processes have occurred naturally. Percentages next to names will represent what proportion of those with popular names carry that one in particular.

The most common Romanian names belong to a few large categories. Hardly surprisingly, among primary economic sector names, most relate to the agricultural sector. We identify names that pertain to animal husbandry, especially sheep farming – Ciobanu, 0.8%, Baciu, 0.4%, Romanian for shepherd, Grădinaru, 0.1% – gardeners – and Vieru, 0.1% – vinegrowers. Naturally, the distribution of agricultural names depends on the comparative advantages yielded by each country’s climate. Moving on to the secondary sector, we encounter names related to crafts and trades – Cojocaru, Cojocariu (furrier), Croitoru (tailor), Feraru (blacksmith), Ciocan (translating to hammer), Ciubotariu (shoemaker or cobbler), Chelaru (locksmith), Olaru, Olariu (potter), Rotaru (wheelwright, wainwright) and Dogaru, Butner – from the german Büttner (cooper). Millers – names Moraru, Morariu, Muraru – fulfil an exceptional role. While they work in the agrarian sector, they nonetheless have a specialised profession. If their share among the population is large, it points to the existence of many well-to-do consumers, who can afford more sophisticated food goods. As emphasised by professor Stephen Broadberry, in a society where individuals barely subsist, the main food source, grain, is turned into porridge – or, in the case of Romanian peasants, a dish called “mămăliga”. While nowadays mămăliga is made from maize flour, prior to the 17th century, when maize was first imported from the New World, the dish was prepared from a cereal called millet. Either way, boiling allows for all calories of raw food to be preserved. By comparison, producing flour loses 25% of its caloric content through waste. Baking bread becomes a more frequent practice when the population experiences intensive growth, improving on its diet.

Many professional names have a Hungarian origin or are magyarised, with popular ones being: Kovacz, Covaci (blacksmith), Suciu (furrier), Szabo, Sabău (tailor), Varga (shoemaker), Molnar (miller). Of course, some of the bearers of these names were, in fact, of Romanian ethnicity. As economists since Adam Smith have remarked, the tertiary sector can only thrive by reallocating surpluses from the primary and secondary sectors. An evolving and diversified tertiary sector is a telltale sign of an economy turning to prosperity. The tertiary sector is represented by the clergy, Pop, Popescu, Popa, Popovici, meaning priest or priest’s descendant, Deaconu, Diacon, Diaconescu, meaning dean or a dean’s son, teachers and cantors – Dascălu – and soldiers – Militaru, literally military man and Cătană. Foresters (Păduraru) managed hunting grounds and ensured timber exploitation privileges were lawfully enforced. A special group is represented by “mazili” (Mazilu) – initially members of the countryside low nobility, they are small landowners who are not in the public office of princes. Some parallels can be perhaps drawn with the British medieval landed gentry, untitled small estate holders who often fulfilled administrative duties. These low-rank boyars were either employed as tax collectors, fought in cavalry regiments or simply managed their domains. Another Hungarian name refers to rural magistrates, mayors or politicians – Biro.

In Romania, the most popular 350 names are borne by 37% of the population, compared to 23% in Poland, 20% in Italy or 28% in Germany. The diversity of indigenous Romanian names is therefore significantly lower. However, a far more important question is, what is the share of those holding occupational names from the total pool of people with common names? This share amounts to 14% in Romania. The respective proportion reaches 15% in Poland, 10% in Italy, while in Germany it adds up to a remarkable 44%. As we are interested in professions that demand some level of specialisation, we have eliminated surnames alluding to traditional farming and the peasantry, the category which constituted the lion’s share of the population. We have removed the Polish names Socha (plough), Ratajczak (ploughman), Skiba (furrow), Kmiecik (peasant farmer), Italian Marra (hoe) and German Kern (grain), Körner (grains), Ackermann (ploughman), Lehmann (feudal tenant), Baur, Bauer, Baumann and Neubauer (peasant). Germany implemented the first modern industrial processes at the start of the 1800s. Systematic industrialisation is considered to have only arrived in Italy and Romania in the late 19th century. Meanwhile, Germany spearheaded technological progress, maintaining a tight competition with the US and the UK and became the European economy with the largest national output in 1908.

Romania displays almost the same aggregate share of occupational names as Poland and Italy. However, we should not dismiss the fact that Romanian-speaking provinces were likely not equally developed. Here, we are especially mindful of Transylvania, relative to the rest of the country. The Transylvanian administration attempted to dilute the ethnic identity of Romanian residents by replacing their family names with the Hungarian counterparts, while still preserving their meaning. So, one method to observe discrepancies between provinces is to counterpose Romanian names against Hungarian ones. Among the Magyar names, 35% relate to occupations, while the equivalent for those bearing Romanian sounding names is barely 13%. Well, how do we interpret this finding? Historically, the Transylvanian administration granted rights and privileges to guilds and burgers, following the German model, which led to an expansion in the ranks of artisans and merchants. As the Romanian historian A.D. Xenopol has pointed out, the Romanian equivalent to guilds, “bresle”, of slavic provenance, did not benefit from the same political support and protection from rulers. Also, Wallachia and Moldavia lacked the network of populous, well-fortified towns, connected to the Central European commercial corridor, which Transylvania had.

As we have discovered the shares of occupational names, let us now go one step further. Even more essentially, what percentage of these surnames identify with the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors? In societies where towns could not outcompete feudal lords for power, most of the inhabitants remained tenant farmers – or even worse, becoming serfs. Nobles extracted revenue from tenant farmers through various means: taxes in coins and in kind and the subjection of peasants to forced labour, to the benefit of the noble, for a set number of days each year, as was the custom in Romanian villages. Farmers complied with such abuses because the seigneurs enforced a monopoly of violence over them. Proof of this lies in the 1779 testimony of Louis Emmanuel, count d’Antraigues, a passenger through the town of Hotin in Moldavia: “Each noble oppresses his realm up to his liking. Each act of disregard or disobedience is punished with one hundred cane strikes, but aristocrats do not carry a right to peasants’ lives, they cannot hang them, burn them alive or cut their heads, the only that has retained that liberty is the prince. Regardless, they [nobles] can kill their people by locking them up and letting them starve, or even through beatings”. Generally, peasants are not allowed to own land and exclusively toil on the properties of their masters – a system that does not reward well-done work in any manner, beyond achieving the means necessary to pay taxes. Likewise, it does not endorse sustainable management or entrepreneurial thinking. The result is a highly antimeritocratic apparatus, featuring a defective incentives structure, where social mobility is virtually non-existent, especially for the serfs who cannot liberate themselves or their offspring. Productivity in this manorial economy was evidently disastrous compared to for-profit farms. In Romanian, the phrase “munca de clacă”, mandatory labour on the seigneur’s behalf, is used as an antiquated expression for performing shoddy work. By contrast, in England, the monarch sought to gradually erode the feudal lords’ authority, granting fiscal exemptions and protection for farmers that escaped from estates and settled in towns and cities. The same phenomenon happened at a much smaller scale in Eastern Europe. As many citizens in medieval cities were either labourers or craftsmen, it is not at all surprising that the secondary sector is better represented in Central and Western European economies.

Table no 1: Population with occupational names, as a percentage of those holding the 350 most common names in a country

We discover that in Romania, those bearing names associated with secondary sector occupations are relatively fewer than in any other country examined, especially after removing names of Hungarian origin (4%). In our analysis, the secondary sector encapsulates the specialised professions in the food sector (millers, winegrowers and vegetable oil producers) and craftsmen. The high number of ecclesiastic Romanian surnames increases the share of people with tertiary sector names. The next step is to observe the share of each occupational category as components in each of the three sectors.

Figure no 1: Percentage of occupational names for people holding the 350 most common names – Romania

Figure no 2: Percentage of occupational names for people holding the 350 most common names – Romania without Transylvania (no Hungarian names)

Figure no 3: Percentage of occupational names for people holding the 350 most common names – Transylvania (Hungarian names)

Figure no 4: Percentage of occupational names for people holding the 350 most common names – Poland

Figure no 5: Percentage of occupational names for people holding the 350 most common names – Italy

Figure no 6: Percentage of occupational names for people holding the 350 most common names – Germany

Figure no 7: Percentage of occupational names for people holding the 350 most common names – compared

Landowners are generally the holders of fairly small properties, judging by the meaning of their names. The Polish Dziedzic translates to heir or proprietor, while the German Huber and Hübner refer to people who owned a “huobe” or hide – unit roughly equivalent to 50 hectares. It was difficult to determine which sector they belonged to. As their main occupation was managing their estates, they can be included de facto in the tertiary sector.

Secondary and tertiary sector names are considerably rarer and less diverse in Romania. This likely indicates that the Romanian principalities featured a less elaborate economic structure compared to contenders in Central and Southern Europe. The share of names related to blacksmithing is meager, reaching 0.5% (0.1% after removing Hungarian names), relative to Poland (4%), Italy (4.2%) and Germany (5%). A group of artisans coveted by kings were the coin minters, who were possibly more numerous in Germany judging by the frequency of surnames – Schilling, 0.2%, Heller, 0.1%. Many names allude to local mayors, judges and bailiffs, equivalent to the Romanian title of “jude”. In Germany, those called Meyer, Hoffmann, Scholz, Voigt and varieties of those names as well as Richter (meaning judge) represent 9.4% of those with common names. In Poland, we encounter the name Szulc (0.3%). The Hungarian name Biro was already mentioned (2.6% of Hungarian Romanian names).

The hospitality sector, represented by inns and taverns, appears to have been weakly developed in Romania, compared to Poland and Germany. Inns mainly served as safe havens for merchants and for the commercial goods they carried. Camping on your own at night was dangerous. While hiring protection was an option, inns and taverns emerged as a hassle-free, cozier alternative. Unsurprisingly, many were especially built on the routes to major trade nodes. Hence, the construction of inns was both an effect and a cause behind merchants attaining commercial prosperity. Importantly, on a secondary level, inns also served as primitive marketmakers for buyers and sellers. They were the place where many businessmen struck deals and where political and economic information, essential for trade, was disseminated first, before making it to towns. This is because the bearers of news, messengers and couriers, were regular customers of these places. Moreover, inns had an important role in the growth of finance, operating as proto-banks. Commercial papers were written and traded here. The percentage of names associated with innkeeping add up to 1.2% in Poland and 1.0% in Germany. The frequency of names for millers reaches 0.9% in Romania (0.7% excluding Magyar names), compared to 0.3% in Poland, 0.6% in Italy and 4.9% in Germany.

It may also be worthwhile to dissect the administration and management sector for a minute. We have already mentioned the judges and mayors. In Romania, the only other surname referring to public office refers to forest wardens – Păduraru, 0.1%. Similarly, few administrative names are found in Poland. Examining Italian names, we come across scribes – Carta, 0.2% –, farm managers – Massaro, 0.2% –, and castellans – Castellano, 0.1%. In Germany, we identify the sommeliers or cellar masters – Keller, 0.4%, Schenk, 0.2% –, the scribes – Schreiber, 0.3% –, forest wardens – Förster, 0.2% –, and church administrators – Kirchner, 0.2%, Köster, 0.1%, Münch, 0.1%. It is very likely that the Romanian clergy (6.1%) had an essential role in assisting with secular management, being among the few literate and arithmetically adept people.

Keeping to the German region, we observe here early evidence of an emerging retail sector. The names Krämer, Kramer, Kremer, Winkler and Kaufmann refer to shopkeepers, peddlers and merchants, which occupy an impressive 1.3% of the total. Their number denotes an evolved and dynamic consumption economy, where vendors supply goods rapidly, frequently and in a predictable manner. This intense economic activity may also explain the high numbers of messengers or postmen (0.1%) and transporters (0.1%). In Poland, the name Flis, meaning raftsman or river hauler, is fairly widespread (0.1%). The lack of such specific names in Romania and Italy may be telling of an underdeveloped consumer goods industry. Finally, names attest to the existence of an incipient healthcare sector. Italian barbers – Barbieri, 0.6% – were also trained to perform medical operations as rudimentary surgeons and dentists. Maybe lesser known is that another profession fulfilled an almost identical role in Germany. Bathhouse owners and attendants – Bader, 0.1%. – were likewise skilled in performing basic health procedures and cutting hair.

It goes without saying that family names only capture a snapshot of a country’s economic situation in the years when those names first become widespread among all social classes and become fixed across generations until, eventually, administration imposes legally recording them. Subjects of the Romanian Kingdom were first required to take a family name in 1895, when the national Name Law was enacted. Before then, the Moldavian and Wallachian population was never constrained to adopt one. However, many of those who lived on the territory of what is nowadays considered Romania had to choose names much earlier than 1895. By this, we refer to inhabitants of the provinces of Transylvania, Banat, Maramureș and Bucovina, who were under the authority of the Habsburg Empire. In the case of Transylvania, Banat and Maramureș, a sizable part of the population received a name when a census was held in 1753 – known by the name “Seelenkonskription” – on the instructions of empress Maria Theresa. The Duchy of Bucovina only became a component of the empire in 1775. In 1787, the son of Maria Theresa, emperor Joseph II, proclaimed by decree that all subjects had to take hereditary surnames. In these Austrian territories, family names appeared exceptionally early.

In the German provinces, the practice of lower echelons taking non-hereditary surnames started with the 16th century. However, permanent names only started being registered legally at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century. In the Polish historical perimeter, following the partitions of the medieval state, the timeline for names becoming legally enforced naturally mirrored that from Germany. In Italy, people first began bearing hereditary names in the 15th century, but these did not become permanent until much later. Four years after the Italian Unification, in 1865, the first Codice Civile was published, which now obligated citizens to register with settled names. All in all, we find that names in Habsburg-controlled provinces predate German and Polish ones by a few decades. Approximately 50-60 years after permanent names were imposed in German states, Italian names became definitive. Then, another 30 years later, names became a legal requirement in the independent Romanian provinces. Therefore, the name analysis most likely facilitates a comparison between economic spaces of Germany and Poland for years 1790-1810, Italy in the 1860s and Romania at the end of the 19th century.

And still, how “scientific” do we deem our findings to be? We concede that the distribution of names depends on a range of aspects, which not all pertain to economic conditions. The way names are assigned can be influenced by cultural practices, preferences, social mimesis and the sometimes arbitrary methods of attributing names, conceived by the administration. A relevant example is the allocation of Jewish names in the Austrian Empire, under Joseph II. Jews who did not choose a particular surname received automatically assigned names practically “made up” by Austrian bureaucrats. Names were picked from a list of predetermined options, with most representing words for metals, colours, flowers and other natural elements. But if we abstract from the vagaries of administration for a moment, we can see that naming standards were generally quite consistent across the four countries. Many occupational names are present in each one of the four nations, some patronymics are almost identical, except for variations in suffixes, topographic names are often inspired by the same natural structures and features. To an extent, name formation transcends cultural particularities and happens in a coherent, almost common fashion in these countries. Naming customs and other cultural factors undoubtedly have an influence. But the sheer numbers of each professional group as a percentage of total population, clearly underpinned by the level of economic progress, is likely the main driver of name distributional differences we observe between nations. Also, while the lack of an industrial, commercial or financial elite may have postponed the adoption of technological breakthroughs and further social reform in countries, it does not imply by any means that having a flat preindustrial hierarchy unequivocally sentenced some countries to underdevelopment in the 20th and 21st centuries. Economists found that between 1913 and 1917, German GDP shrank by 27%, with national income only recovering to pre-WW1 levels in 1927. Meanwhile, the Italian economy experienced vertiginous growth following WW2, consolidating its position as the fourth European economy by output. While the presence of premodern elites had a likely effect on middle-to-long term economic performance, countries are not bound to a path of historical determinism.

Franco Sivori, a Genoan merchant from the retinue of prince Petru Cercel, emphasizes, in his testimony from around 1588, that “Wallachians are, by their nature, fickle people (...) they do not care to apply themselves to any craft or to practice any arts. The middling population and peasants both endeavour with working the fields (...)”. Wandering the streets of Wallachian towns, Sivori does not seem to find the diligent, business-oriented Italian artisan from home, who passionately pursued the sublime in his craft. Two centuries later, in 1782, the Polish interpreter Josef Mikoscha briefly crossed through Moldavia. While only on a short passage, he spends just enough time to conceive an opinion of the country’s economic strategy: “In the exercise of his rule, the prince is not guided by even the slightest love towards the country’s wellbeing (...) he only contemplates extortions and turns a blind eye to the thieves that pay him. That is why he is miles away from doing even the faintest gesture to develop agriculture and the crafts”. Extrapolating Mikoscha’s perception, we could say that the magnanimity of rulers is measured by their willingness to devise a plan to make his subjects more prosperous.

The story that names reveal today points to the same direction as the accounts of medieval travellers. These wanderers were trained in the art of reading into the subtleties of places they visited, with just a simple glance. Instead of percentage figures, these perceptive individuals relied on their acute common sense. Their statements also help us dismantle another common misconception. These Middle Age reporters – and certainly many of their contemporaries – were neither backward nor ignorant of the devices of economic development – namely, labour specialisation and industrial growth. While the “Industrial Revolution” was indeed a period of unprecedented advancements in productivity and capital growth, it was in fact only the pinnacle of a more ample and less explosive longue durée process. The testimonies prove that breakthroughs in the economic perspective preceded the technological boom by multiple centuries.

Photo source: PxHere.com.