Hemming Edvard Hakasalo

In the early 20th century, many Hackzell family members in Finland changed their Hackzell family name into Hakasalo.

Following that name change, starting in the late 1920s, Hemming Edvard Hakasalo - formerly Hackzell - became a notable advocate for and organizer of thousands of similar family name changes in Finland, from foreign-sounding names - seen from Finnish-language perspective - into more Finnish-sounding names.

A radio interview from 1932 made on this topic with Hemming Edvard - know better as "Hemminki" and "Hemmu" among family members - is available at the YLE public radio archives.
- Often the newly-acquired family names were direct or close Finnish language translations of the former family names. A similar wave of name changes and/or translations into "Finnish" names had also taken place a few decades before.

In the more distant past, Finnish language family names had in many occasion been substituted by Swedish or other foreign-sounding versions - or translations - of the original Finnish language family names, which for non-Finnish-speaking people were often somewhat difficult to pronounce.

Sometimes both Finnish and Swedish language family names in Finland and in Sweden Proper in the past had been "Latinized", as e.g. in the case of the Rector ("kyrkoherde") Anders Hackzelius, by adding "ius" in the end of the name. Anders was a 17th century forefather of Hemming Edvard Hakasalo (Hackzell).

The origins of the Hackzell family name appear to be interconnected with the origins of a place called Hacksta, located circa 30 kilometers east from the modern-day city of Stockholm in Sweden, where Andreas Hackzelius was born in 1630 AD.

Andreas was a son of Lars Eriksson, who was a son of Erik Bengtson, who was a son of Bengt.