3.5 Occupation names. The occupation name is the name derived from the designation of a persons occupation. Thus its first use would have been by an adult who had acquired that particular associated skill. Eventually when the society required a surname children born to that person, or women married to him might use it as their surname. The occupation name differed from many others by originally carrying along with it the definite article, e.g., le Clerck, i.e., the clerk or cleric. The modern counterparts have dropped this article, e.g., Clark. In other languages, the analogous phenomenon may not have resulted in dropping the article, perhaps merely making it a prefix, e.g., Lefebvre, i.e., the smith, Smith. It may be immaterial whether an occupation name was ever in a particular culture accepted as a surname per se. Deriving a surname from such a name is nevertheless useful to distinguish persons of different ancestry.