This Swedish surname of AURIEMMA was a status name for a priest or a man of the cloth. Not all men with such a name would have been clergymen, but such a name would have been adopted as a status symbol to show to others that they were of purer or nobler blood. The name was also spelt AURELIAN and AURELIANUS. Lucias Domitius AURELIAN (circa.215-275AD) was the Roman emperor (270-75). He was of humble birth and owed his accession to the army. He restored imperial unity by his victories over the Vandals, 'Zenobia of Palmyra' and the Gallic Empire at Chalons. He was murdered near Byzantium. In the 17th century, so-called 'soldiers' names are found as the earliest kind of hereditary surnames in Sweden. These names were derived from vocabulary words, usually martial-sounding monosyllables such as Rapp (prompt) Rask (bold), or occasionally names of animals and birds. The names were bestowed on soldiers for administrative purposes, and no doubt in some cases derived from pre-existing nicknames. Most Swedes did not adopt hereditary surnames until a century or more later, and the patronymic system was still in use in rural areas until late in the 19th century. In the absence of evidence to the contrary it is thought that people may have adopted their surname from the area in which they lived. When the first immigrants from Europe went to America, the only names current in the new land were Indian names which did not appeal to Europeans vocally, and the Indian names did not influence the surnames or Christian names already possessed by the immigrants. Mostly the immigrant could not read or write and had little or no knowledge as to the proper spelling, and their names suffered at the hands of the government officials. The early town records are full of these mis-spelt names most of which gradually changed back to a more conventional spelling as education progressed. In the Middle Ages heraldry came into use as a practical matter. It originated in the devices used to distinguish the armoured warriors in tournament and war, and was also placed on seals as marks of identity. As far as records show, true heraldry began in the middle of the 12th century, and appeared almost simultaneously in several countries of Western Europe.