What's in a name?

Recently, I was browsing ship manifests looking for my ancestors who, I know, emigrated from Sweden in the 1850’s.  I was looking for the surname Gustafson (my great grandmother) and I noticed, amongst many Gustafsons, some Gustafsdotters.  Intrigued, I looked into the naming system in Sweden prior to 1800 and this is what I learned.  In Sweden, personal nomenclature was based on the use of patronymics wherein a person’s name would be that of the father with the addition of ‘son’ or ‘dotter’ affixed depending on whether the child was male or female.  Thus, the offspring of Pedre would become Pedresson or Pedresdotter.  In the case of ‘son,’ even the added ‘s’ was maintained and that is why you find so many double esses in Swedish names;  Petersson, Ericsson, Johnsson, etc.

With a little more poking around I found out that the old Norse name Endri, was fairly common through the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries and that Endrisson and Endrisdotter were also fairly common.  When Sweden finally adopted the surname system of naming children, sometime in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, Endrisson became Hendersson and finally Henderson.

One more thing, do we really need two words to describe the act of moving from one country to another?  If you are in Sweden talking about people leaving for another country, they are Emigrating, but if you are in the other country talking about those same people coming into your country, they are Immigrating.  Change the first letter and add an ‘M’?  Why bother?