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As I understand it, this began among the gentry in England during Elizabethan times, though it was very rare in the beginning, and was the names used were normally the surnames of close relatives (often the mother's maiden name) or godparents. One of the earliest examples is Lady Douglas Sheffied, who was born in 1545. Her existence is sort of doubly ironic because she was a woman, and because Douglas is still almost exclusively a male name when used as a given name in English speaking countries today:

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Douglas_Sheffield

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The custom grew greatly during the early 19th century in the USA, when it became common for boys to be given the surnames of famous men as their given names, whether or not there was any family connection. In spite of Douglas Sheffield, it was always much rarer for girls to be given surnames as first names than boys, though this was much more common in the Southern USA than elsewhere before modern times. During the last few decades, it seems as if many modern parents make little distinction between former surnames and other given names in all English speaking countries, and the girls are catching up to the boys, with many recent fashionable surname forms such as Delaney and Presley becoming common for girls without ever having gone through a previous period of noticeable use for boys, like Shirley and Ashley did.