An interesting question... to which I hope to giver a limited, yet satisfactory, response; Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri wrote an excellent paper on the matter (Le trasformazioni onomastiche e antroponimiche dei ceti dominanti a Roma nei secc. X-XII - in Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome, 1994) and that's what I'm using.

Did they use surnames?

With regards to the area of the city of Rome, which is the one covered by the paper I mentioned above, the simplest answer would be yes - they actually did. The longer one is that 9/10th-century Romans didn't quite use them in the same way as we do: patronymics, and not 'proper' surnames, were the favourite way to indicate familiar ascendancy among the city's various social strata. And almost without any class distinction of sorts, we might add, for one's social standing could actually be more easily guessed by looking at his or her first name instead! Here's how it worked...

Parents belonging to the richer strata tended to baptise their children with either Greek or Classical Roman names, whereas their counterparts from a lower social background usually chose more 'typical' ones such as Cencio or Gosmario. Biblical/Germanic names were equally as popular and widespread, while that particular kind of stratum we might tentatively try to identify with some sort of a proto-middle class had a penchant for other Romance names.

So we have two similar phenomena in which both classes shared the same naming patterns:

• A commoner, one certain Saxus macellarius ("Sasso the butcher"), had a son was formally mentioned by the local notary by the name of Gregorius Sassonis macellarii ("Gregory [the son] of Sasso the butcher").

• Teobaldo, a nobleman, had another son who was - in a contract mentioning him - referred to as Stephanus filii Theobaldi Cenci de Stephano (Stephen the son of Theobaldus [son] of Cencio [son] of Stephen [the elder]).

Indeed, you may have noticed how most of these 'surnames' actually consisted of a rather contrived way to summarise one's genealogy by means of elencating the most recent ancestors; this was by no means a perfect system, but it would evolve over a couple of centuries to become the one we know today.

Did the noble houses have a name, like the romans did? Did the concept of HOUSE exist at the time?

The concept per se had certainly survived from Antiquity... it's just that a person's very own lineage wasn't usually linked to a single and easily recognisable surname, a concept which would see the light only a few centuries after.

Your problem here may be that you're used to surname=family name, and it didn't.

A surname was any name tacked onto your personal name Jehan the butcher, Jehan from the birch grove, Jehan the bearded. It could also be a patronymic, as the other answer mentioned, and run out several generations if necessary. But that changed with every generation. The Romans had gotten that idea from the Etruscans, but nobody else around Europe used it, except to kiss up to the Romans, like Gauls who happily dropped the name when Rome lost power. Even the Romans quit using family names in later antiquity.

What your Western Carolingians did not have, and even noble families did not have until you neared the Renaissance, were family names that remained the same from one generation to the other, except by accident. (Like everyone was millers, so they kept getting called "the miller"). Inherited family names weren't part of the culture. A family might be known as the descendants of one person, like the Amal line of the Ostrogoths, but it wasn't a family name. They didn't add it to their baptismal name. Because feudalism wasn't well developed, they weren't attached to a place title, like being margrave of Milan.

The concept of family existed, certainly, as a bunch of people you worked with for mutual benefit in politics. But I don't know what your concept of HOUSE-thingy is.

Source: Ingraham, People's Names

There's a census of Paris in 13th C if you want to see a bunch of really medieval names.

I recommend looking at these threads:

• Where did surnames come from?
• Where did surnames from various cultures originate from?

I know you mentioned central Europe, but surnames were first found in northern countries like Norway. Germany, for instance, has surnames written around the 12th century. Thus, I've been unable to find surnames in central Europe prior this date, but I'd love someone to disprove me.

However, Romans and Greeks would refer to themselves as "son of father" or "from region" on occasion. Not technically a surname and it was only used when someone requested them for further identity. For example, one could introduce themselves as "Paul." Then another person will ask, "I know of Paul, which one are you?" He would reply, "Paul of Tarsus."

This book goes into greater details.

Source on Romans/Greeks