October 9, 2026
My maiden name is Fernelius. No one was able to pronounce it or spell it. If a teacher fumbled over a name on the first day of school, I answered. I knew they meant me.
There weren’t a lot of Ferneliuses, but we were proud of our name. My great grandfather came from Sweden in the mid-1800s. His name was Carl Fernelius there. He changed his first name to Charles, but he never thought of anglicizing his surname, even if people misspelled and mispronounced it.
When I got to junior high, a teacher looked at my name and asked me where it came from. I said it was Swedish. He looked at me and said, “I don’t think so. You’d better ask your folks again. That’s not a Swedish name. I’m sure it must be Italian.” I was shocked, but that was long before DNA testing. I just took my dad’s word that his grandfather had been Swedish, not Italian.
Many years later, when DNA testing became common, I tested. My dad was right. I’m 25% Swedish according to multiple testing companies – just what I should be with one set of Swedish great grandparents. Despite my not-very-Swedish sounding surname, I have no southern European ancestry.
When I started to work on family history, I joined a Swedish genealogy society. I learned that most Scandinavians practiced a patronymic naming system. Each generation’s surname was derived from their father’s name with son or datter added to it. For example, if a man named Jon had a son, that son’s last name would be Jonsson. If he had a daughter, her surname would be Jonsdatter. Every generation had a different surname, and most people with the surname were not related. Their fathers just had the same first name.
That wasn’t the case with my Fernelius name. As I followed the line through time via church records, censuses and other records, I saw that my family’s surname was always Fernelius. It didn’t change with the generations.
A native Swedish member of the genealogy society suggested that the “elius” part of Fernelius came from Latin. It means “son of” in Latin. Lutheran pastors, who had more education than most Swedes, often elevated their names by translating them from Swedish to Latin. He thought I should look for pastors in my family.
Although I searched, I never found a single pastor in any of my Swedish lines. What I found instead was that my Fernelius family were iron and steel makers. Sweden was famed for the quality of its steel, and craftsmen specialized in the work. These craftsmen developed their own society. Many of them adopted non-changing surnames based on Latin. They married daughters of other steel makers, not farmers’ daughters from the surrounding area. That’s why the women my Fernelius ancestors married had surnames like Aspman and Kihlstrom, names that remained stable through the generations.
By the mid-1800s, large foundries like Alfred Nobel’s Bofors factory in Karlskoga replaced the village forges. Mechanization replaced the craftsmen. Many of them, like the Ferneliuses, left Sweden for America.
Despite being farmers and laborers on the railroads in America, the Ferneliuses retained the same pride in their name that their ancestors in Sweden had. As far as I know, none of them ever changed it or anglicized it. A name like Fernelius set them apart, and they were proud of it.
When I got married, I changed my name, but it was not an easy decision. I’ve noticed that many women use their maiden name as a middle name when they do genealogy. I do too. The story of my name is a part of who I am, and I don’t want to lose it. Studying my surname has taught me a lot about my family history.
Carol Fernelius Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society