I can think of only a few things that come before a last name: O’, Mac, Mc, Van, Von, Van
Der, Von Der, Van Den, Von Den, Vander, Vonder,
Vanden, Vonden, Lo (as in the composer Lo Presti),
and Gel (as in the scientist Gel Mann).
1) Are there any more and what are they and what do they mean?
2) What do the ones I can think of mean?,
listed above?
3) When the vans are spelled vander, vonder,
vanden, or vonden, are these particles or prefixes
always attached to the name, as in Vanderleck or
is it possible to have something like Vander Leck?
4) Is the Gell in Gell’Mann spelled like I
just spelled it? I’ve seen this Gell before, and
I’m not sure it belongs on this list of name prenomens or if it is something only in Semitic
languages where you put apostrophes after a lot
of things for some unknown reason.
Right off the top of my head:
Osama bin Laden
Oscar de la Hoya
I’ve seen D in last names before, such as D’Angelo & D’Angelido.
The O’ is from a Irish Gaelic word literally meaning “grandson”, and generally has come to mean “descended from.” “Mac” means “son of”.
Actually, the O (and it is O and NOT O’, thus, “O Brien” is correct but “O’Brien” is a vile Britishism introduced during the tyranny of the English throne over Ireland that should be eradicated from all usage.) is from Ui, which means “descendent more distant than a son”. There is a female equivalent of “mac”, and that is “nic”. Thus, Eoin’s son would be “Seamus MacEoin” but his daughter would be “Brigid NicEoin”.
As for the original question. Welsh has Fitz/Fits/Fiss/Fyss, which often was used to designate illegitimate descent, although it did not necessarily mean that.
Now Vander and Vonder are actually just Van Der and Von Der run togehter.
Di (as is DiRestofname) and De (DeRestofname)
Oh! and Del (DelRestofname).
That would be as in, not as is.
would al be one? As in Hafez al Assad?
How about “ter” and “ten”? (Dutch? Can’t think of examples, but I know I’ve seen them.)
Corrie Ten Boom (Holocaust survivor)
ter Horst
“bar” has an illustrious example
Pepe Le Pew.
Ap = “son of” in Welsh names.
Van is Dutch and von is German for “of” or “from.”
Den and Der and some other variants mean “the.” The differences are due to the different grammatical constructions that are still used in Germanic languages that English has lost. So some of the articles will be masculine or feminine and some will indicate a genitive or other case.
When the separate words have been pushed together (e.g. Vander), it does not really change the meaning.
De means “of” in several Romance languages, although it also may be spelled di (or abbreviated to d’) in Italian.
On the other hand, de also means “the” in Dutch, so you have to look at the word that follows it to see whether it means “the” or “of.” (And then pray that the family was not originally from Belgium where someone might have put a Flemish (Dutch) article in front of a French word or a Walloon (French) article in front of a Dutch word to create the name. (That is rare, but it has happened.)
Ter and ten, in Dutch, are general purpose prepositions that may mean “at,” “in,” “through,” “for (the purpose of),” etc.
The Semitic ben prefix (familiar to most people in the States from Jewish/Hebrew/Aramaic names–along with bar noted above) can be found both in the bin, mentioned above, and in its variant ibn.
And, while the OP addressed prefixed words, let us not forget suffixes. The Northern Slavic -ski, -sky, -cki (all originally pronounced something like /tski/ although the pronunciations have been frequently mangled in the States), indicate descent from someone.
-vitz and -wicz and similar ending from the same region have a similar meaning, but I do not know the exact translation.
I am not sure of the meaning of the -ov or -off suffix in Russian.
The Scandinavian -son and -sen (and now rare -dottir) all indicated that one was the child of the name that preceded. (Before the name “normalization” undertaken in Scandinavia in the 19th and 20th centuries, they did not carry “family” names as such, but used a confusing (to the outsider) collection of names indicating that a person was the son (or daughter) of a particular person, matched to a name or phrase that indicated the village or large farm where one lived or worked.)
I don’t know about Fits/Fiss/Fyss but Fitz is Anglo-Norman, not Welsh.
Von is quite rare, because that prefix usually, but not always, is a mark of nobility, the ‘von’ having originally referred to the place or region owned by the family.
But rarer still is vom, which is a contraction of von dem. Vom Rath was the name of a German diplomat stationed in Paris, in the late 1930’s. He was assasinated there by a Jewish dissident in 1938, and this is thought to have brought on the pogrom of 1938. Though obviously, the Nazis were probably going to do it anyway.
"The Scandinavian -son and -sen (and now rare -dottir) "
Not rare in Iceland. And it’s “sson” there, too, not “son”. Is that from “Eric’s-son”?
-sen is usually Danish, though not always. -son is more often Swedish or Norwegian.
Yes, “al” is one, also bin/ben/ibn (“son of”), and “abu”
Then Cornish names have Tre-, Pol-, Pen-.
Keep in mind that “abu” is “father of” in arabic, which makes it a bit different. And it is often used as an “assumed name” by the politically inclined, rather than simply “Father of (my son) so-and-so”. IIRC, Abu Nidal = Father of the Struggle, or something similar.
-son is not that usual in Norway, while -sen is very common.
You also have the “av”/“af” that is similar to the german “von”.