I've been trying to find a definitive answer to this question without much luck.
Generally, I've found reference to the fact that the Irish started using fixed last names around about the 10th century, and then English and French nobles started using fixed last names around about the Norman conquest. Adoption of fixed surnames by French and English commoners/peasants came later, but how much later?
I've also found that the Dutch were still using patronymic surnames up until 1811 when Napoleon occupied the Netherlands and required a civil registration of the Dutch populace, and made everyone adopt a fixed surname. So I'd assume that surnames in France were fixed among the working class sometime before that, but how much before?
In other words, I know that French nobility were using fixed last names as early as the year 1000, and French peasants were using fixed last names at least by 1811, but can anyone narrow it down even further? Obviously, there's probably not a specific date that it happened, but if I were to meet a French peasant in 1300, would they be likely to have a fixed last name? What about in 1600?
Can anybody with knowledge of France in the Middle Ages answer this question?
And if anybody's feeling particularly ambitious, when did fixed surnames spread to German-speaking commoners? (A little bit more difficult, I know, since Germany had a much longer road to unification than many of its neighbors.)
Here are the names of witnesses and subjects whose first name begins with 'B' from the village of Mas-Saintes-Puelles that I've extracted from the inquisition records of Toulouse, 1244-45 (MS609); they all have last names, sometimes two:
B. de Causit, B. de Montesquivo, B. de na Vierna, B. Lapassa, B. Roger, Beatrice de Saint-Julia, Beguon de Rochavila, Bequet de Vilanova, Bernard Ademar, Bernard Aichart, Bernard Amelh, Bernard Barrau, Bernard Bru, Bernard Cap-de-Porc (aka de Saint-Andrea), Bernard Cogota, Bernard de Lanta, Bernard de Mairevilla, Bernard de Quiders, Bernard de Recauth, Bernard de Vilar, Bernard del Mas (Senior), Bernard Fabri, Bernard Faure (de Renneville), Bernard Garnier, Bernard Garsias, Bernard Pages, Bernard Pages, Bernard Vitalis, Bernarda de Rosengue, Bernarda Gasc, Bernarda Ysar, Bertrand Alaman, Bertrand de Quiders, Bertrand Marti, Bertrand Marti de Puybusque, Braida de Mont Server
These were not all 'peasants', but a mix of minor nobility, tradespeople (butchers, shoemakers, etc), and farmers of different sorts. There are thousands upon thousands of different names - 5,000 surviving deponent records alone.
I've found amongst the hundreds of names a few instances where seniors of the village would be referred to by a single name like 'Garnier', but that didn't mean s/he didn't have first & last name. So, for purposes of knowing who was who, last names were well common at this time. Were they used in everyday life? Probably not....because they didn't need to. And even the notaries abbreviate the names frequently.
Moreover, I'm not sure we can really have a 'history of the development of surnames', but only a 'history of the recording of surnames which have come down to us.' It seems the growth of literacy and development of legal instruments and documents in the central middle ages provoked an eventual need for recording fuller names, but that's a far cry from saying it caused the 'invention' of a surname. But I am not a historian of names.