Last
One-Name Study

Topics

• About the Last One-Name Study
• Variants
• Origin of the surname
• Historical occurrences
• Frequency of the name
• Distribution of the name
• Contact Details

About the Last One-Name Study

The Last One-Name Study commenced three years ago after attempts to trace my own family tree and finding that there were so many other people based in Suffolk with the same surname.

Variants

The registered variant of the name is Laster.

Origin of the surname

LAST

Name Meaning and History

English (East Anglia): Metonymic occupational name for a cobbler or perhaps a metonymic occupational name for a maker of cobblers’ lasts

Dutch: metonymic occupational name from Middle Dutch last 'load', 'burden', or a nickname for an awkward character, from Dutch last 'trouble', 'nuisance'.

French: habitional name from a place so nmaed in Puy-de-Dome

German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): metonymic occuptional name for a porter, from Middle High German last; German Last or Yiddish last 'burden', 'load'.

Historical occurrences

Some occurances of the Last name in history include:

1. Nella Last (née Nellie Lord; 4 October 1889 – 22 June 1968) was a housewife who lived in Barrow-in-Furness, England. She wrote a diary for the Mass-Observation Archive from 1939 until 1965 making it one of the most substantial diaries held by M-O. An edited version of the two million words or so she wrote during World War II was originally published in 1981 as 'Nella Last's War: A Mother's Diary, 1939-45' and republished as 'Nella Last's War: The Second World War Diaries of 'Housewife 49'' in 2006. A second volume of her diaries, 'Nella Last's Peace: The Post-war Diaries of Housewife 49', was published in October 2008.

The daughter of local railway clerk John Lord, Nella was married, on 17 May 1911, to William Last, a shopfitter, and had two sons, Arthur and Cliff. During the war she worked for the Women's Voluntary Service (W.V.S) and the Red Cross. The wartime diaries were dramatised by Victoria Wood for ITV in 2006 as Housewife, 49, which is how she headed her first entry at the age of 49.

Her published writing describes what is was like for ordinary people to live through World War Two, reports on the bombing (including her own home) of Barrow in April 1941 and includes her reflections on a wide range of contemporary issues. Some critics, such as Edward Blisham, see a proto-feminism that anticipates the post-war women's movement in her account of her own marriage and her liberation from housewifery through her war work.

Her son Clifford Last (1918–1991) emigrated to Australia following the war and went on to become a noted sculptor, with works displayed at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.

2. James Last (born Hans Last on 17 April 1929 in Bremen) is a German composer and big band leader.

Last's father was an official at the public works department of the city of Bremen and he grew up in the suburb of Sebaldsbrück. He learned to play the piano from the age of 12, then switched to double bass as a teenager. His home city was heavily bombed in World War II and he ran messages to air defence command posts during raids. At 14 he was entered in the Bückeburg Military Music School of the German Wehrmacht.

After the fall of the Nazis, he joined Hans-Gunther Österreich's Radio Bremen Dance Orchestra in 1946. In 1948, he became the leader of the Last-Becker Ensemble, which performed for seven years. During that time, he was voted as the best bassist in the country by a German jazz poll for three consecutive years, from 1950–1952. After the Last-Becker Ensemble disbanded, he became the in-house arranger for Polydor Records, as well as for a number of European radio stations. For the next decade, he helped arrange hits for artists like Helmut Zacharias, Freddy Quinn, Lolita, Alfred Hause and Caterina Valente.

3. William Isaac Last AMICE (1857 – 7 August 1911) was a British mechanical engineer who became a museum curator and the second Director of the Science Museum in London.

W. I. Last was born in Dorchester and educated as a mechanical engineer. He was initially apprenticed with Messrs. Haywood, Tyler and Company. For the first part of his career, he was involved in civil engineering and mechanical engineering activities in England and South Africa. In 1890, he was appoint to the position of Keeper of the Machinery and Inventions division of the South Kensington Museum. He was promoted to Senior Keeper in 1900, when the scientific part of the museum had been split into the Science Museum, and then became Director of the museum in 1904 until his death in 1911.

He was a Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Frequency of the name

In the 1881 census there were 2,407 Last's recorded in that census.

Currently there are 3,809 people with the surname Last and it ranks number 2097 in the list of surnames of England and Wales

Distribution of the name

In the 1881 census the most populous counties are Suffolk (657), Essex (83) and Middlesex (81)

In the 1901 census the most populous counties are Suffolk (1,071), London (482) and Essex (395)

Contact details

For further information, contact:

Mr Simon Last
8 Sackville Rd,
Southend on Sea,
Essex
SS2 4UQ
UNITED KINGDOM
E-mail:

This page last updated 13 January 2012.

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Profiles of other one-name studies registered with the Guild may be found here.