# German speakers: Um berufen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 28, 2004, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843 "2004-03-28T01:51:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![JeremiahHorrocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@JeremiahHorrocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeremiahHorrocks)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2012, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/41 "2012-12-26T16:35:35Z")
(1) I think that there are reasonable grounds for believing that a substantial segment of the British aristocracy might be familiar with the German word “unberufen” by the 1840s (i.e., after Victoria became queen). George I, a German, became king of the U.K. in 1714. His successor, George II, was also a German. The wives of George III, George IV, William IV, and Prince Edward (Queen Victoria’s father) were all Germans. Thus, by the time that Victoria became queen in 1837, Germans had been in the British court for over 100 years – time enough to introduce one little word – “unberufen” – into the aristocracy’s vocabulary. (2) I apologize to everyone for diverting the discussion from P.G. Wodehouse’s story “Right Ho, Jeeves” to Queen Victoria’s vocabulary. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2012, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/42 "2012-12-26T16:41:23Z")
> [@WotNot](#): > > He died before she was a year old, he can’t have immersed her much. Point taken. I was unaware of this. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2012, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/43 "2012-12-26T23:52:30Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > … > > Generally [Aunt Dahlia] is described as Bertie’s father’s (& Agatha’s) sister) and as having dandled him on her knee as a baby. But other references seem to indicate that Bertie first encountered her at her wedding to his Uncle Tom. Yes she did dandle him, but she once (?only) regretted plucking a pacifier from his mouth when it interfered with his windpipe. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/44 "2012-12-27T17:10:39Z")
As the somewhat bemused author of this doubly revived zombie, I just wanted to say that although I had pretty much set aside my original doubts about _unberfen_ about eight and a half years ago (post #12), I appreciate **JeremiahHorrocks** ’ extensive research and thoughtful posts, and the other recent contributions to the thread. And to **Spectre** and **Leo** , please forgive my dillettantish ignorance of the details of Bertie’s aunts, and other things Wodehousian. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/45 "2012-12-27T17:55:14Z")
No prob. The Code of the Woosters: Help Out a Pal. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/46 "2012-12-27T22:11:59Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Wodehouse seemed to waffle on the relationship. Generally she is described as Bertie’s father’s (& Agatha’s) sister) and as having dandled him on her knee as a baby. But other references seem to indicate that Bertie first encountered her at her wedding to his Uncle Tom. Perhaps there were two Uncle Toms–and two Aunt Dahlias! _Jaws dropping in disbelief, everyone in the thread turned to face **Spectre** …_ ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/47 "2012-12-27T22:22:43Z")
In general, there are a lot of contradictions of this sort in Wodehouse’s work. ISTM that he did not concern himself with consistency in his little world. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/48 "2012-12-27T22:35:40Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > In general, there are a lot of contradictions of this sort in Wodehouse’s work. ISTM that he did not concern himself with consistency in his little world. The inconsistencies are rarely of much significance, however. I notice a few cases of first names getting mixed up, which doesn’t seem too important since nobody ever gets addressed by their first name except by aunts and other relatives. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/49 "2012-12-27T22:51:59Z")
Depends what you mean by “significant”. 🙂 Most jarring to me was the way Oofy Prosser is frequently described as the only money man in the Drones club and the guy everyone invariably tries to touch, despite his stingy nature. This despite the fact that Bertie Wooster is also a Drones club member and a wealthy guy and a very easy touch. In general, the Drones Club appears a lot in stories focusing on Bertie, but Bertie does not appear in stories focusing on Drones. This includes Bingo Little, Bertie’s great pal, who goes to great lengths to get a bit of cash out of Oofy and never considers Bertie. Or even Mervyn Mulliner, who tries unsuccesfully to touch Oofy and never considers his own cousin and fellow DC member Archibald Mulliner, who is very wealthy. Speaking of which there’s Aurelia Cammerleigh, Archie Mulliner’s beloved. In the first story, he has to try to impress her only relative, her nutty aunt. In the second, he tries to break his engagment by insulting her father. And then there’s Lord Emsworth’s innumerable sisters. That’s off the top of my head. But that’s been my general impression. Wodehouse is about the goofball mindset and turn of phrase. Everything else is unimportant and I don’t think he paid much attention to it. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/50 "2012-12-27T23:05:57Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > I don’t think a Google search is reliable for this type of thing. > > The Cohen Brothers were obviously Jewish and stereotypically so, but are not directly identified as such, and would not turn up in a Google search using the word “Jew” or “Jewish”… Wodehouse spent most of his professional life in theater as well. Offhand–no cites, which shows I’m losing my chops: 1. The two film studio producers, each run by a guy with an obvious Jewish name. In one the stories they compete (and combine?) to ensure their liquor stock during prohibition. 2. The stage producer whose 10-year old son has the intelligence of the average playgoer, who gets the chump Cyril fired. 3. In a novel, the producer who gets the title character to invest in his play. > [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > … Wodehouse is about the goofball mindset and turn of phrase. Everything else is unimportant and I don’t think he paid much attention to it. Actually, brilliant as his goofball mindsets and spectacular way with English, Wodehouse claimed the hardest, longest, and chief difficulty in his writing was devising the intricate slip-sliding plots. The rest he just banged away, as I think he put it. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/51 "2012-12-27T23:11:10Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > 1. The two film studio producers, each run by a guy with an obvious Jewish name. In one the stories they compete (and combine?) to ensure their liquor stock during prohibition. I think it was three of them, actually. I too forget their names - Minna Nordstrom rose to stardom in that story. > [@](#): > > 1. The stage producer whose 10-year old son has the intelligence of the average playgoer, who gets the chump Cyril fired. Blumenfeld > [@](#): > > Actually, brilliant as his goofball mindsets and spectacular way with English, Wodehouse claimed the hardest, longest, and chief difficulty in his writing was devising the intricate slip-sliding plots. The rest he just banged away, as I think he put it. Probably hard for him because he wasn’t particularly good at it. (They’re mostly just variations of each other.) ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2012, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/52 "2012-12-27T23:22:51Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > …[snip]… I challenge anyone to pronounce **Fotheringay-Phipps** ’s name ( **Fotheringay-Fipps** excluded from challenge). ---
**Author:** ![JeremiahHorrocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@JeremiahHorrocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeremiahHorrocks)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2012, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/53 "2012-12-28T04:28:54Z")
Dear friends – I recently speculated about the frequency of use of the world “unberufen” during the 18th and 19th century. However, it is one thing to speculate and quite another to find the evidence to support one’s speculations. Google Books provides a means of searching for the occurrence of a word or name among its vast collection of scanned books. So I decided to search for the occurrence of “unberufen” among Google Books. I was stunned by the results, which were not at all what I’d expected. I searched books between 1750 and 1950. Among the books that Google searched, the word “berufen” first appeared in 1864 and then disappeared by 1873. (It appeared mainly in German-English dictionaries or in novels or in books about Jewish mysticism.) It reappeared in 1888 and soared to a peak in 1905, after which it declined, with several minima – in 1913, 1932, and near extinction in 1942 – although it recovered thereafter. Here’s the link to one of my searches for “unberufen” in Google Books (from 1860 to 1950)– > **[Google Books Ngram Viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=unberufen&year_start=1860&year_end=1950&corpus=0&smoothing=3&share=)** > > Google Books Ngram Viewer Notice that the page displays a graph of the incidence of the word vs. the year. Under the graph, it lists various time periods. If you click on any one of those time periods, Google Books will display the books (from that period) in which it found the word “unberufen”, with an extract of the text featuring the word “unberufen” in boldface. You can change the start and end dates of the search if you want, and you can search for other words if you want. Enjoy !! ---
**Author:** ![JeremiahHorrocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b4bc9f/32.png) [@JeremiahHorrocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeremiahHorrocks)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2012, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/54 "2012-12-28T04:38:19Z")
In my previous posting, the following sentence appears : “Among the books that Google searched, the word “berufen” first appeared in 1864 …” This sentence _should_ read : “Among the books that Google searched, the word “ **UN** berufen” first appeared in 1864 …” Sorry about the typo. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2012, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/55 "2012-12-31T08:48:15Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > I challenge anyone to pronounce **Fotheringay-Phipps** ’s name ( **Fotheringay-Fipps** excluded from challenge). “Fungy Fipps” ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2012, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/56 "2012-12-31T12:38:12Z")
Yes, I must say, indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Fidicen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f08c70/32.png) [@Fidicen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fidicen)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2014, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/57 "2014-08-11T11:10:32Z")
I have on my bookshelf a single-volume French-English-German dictionary published by F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig, in 1861. The entry in the German section for “unberufen”, listing the French and English equivalents, is: Unberufen, a. & ad. _sans vocation, sans qualification_; not called for, meddling. My 1980 Collins Gem German-English dictionary translates it as “touch wood”. Aunt Dahlia was very much aristocratic. In her youth, before WW1, she hunted with the Quorn, doubtless in the company of members of the Court at least some of whom would have been German-speaking, as was the Royal Family in those days. She would also have associated with other members of the aristocracy with close ties to the Court. Her automatic response of “oom beroofen” to what she interpreted as a sneeze by Bertie would not have been out of place given this background. ---
**Author:** ![samread2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@samread2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samread2)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2016, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/58 "2016-03-21T09:46:11Z")
Coming in twelve years after the original question may seem late but I get the impression that the enquirer was interested in the meaning of the word/phrase itself, not necessarily in the context. “Umberufen”, possibly in Jewish families more than others, is used in German where “Touch wood” or “God willing” is used in English. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2018, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/59 "2018-02-04T03:44:07Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > I challenge anyone to pronounce **Fotheringay-Phipps** ’s name ( **Fotheringay-Fipps** excluded from challenge). > [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > “Fungy Fipps” I always thought it was pronounced like “spongey.” [Now I learn it’s not.](https://youtu.be/C-gvuakWxM4?t=2m51s) ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2018, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843/60 "2018-02-04T10:22:04Z")
I am surprised that no one quoted Mark Twain > [@](#): > > I think the hen ought to have a name; she must be called Unberufen. That > is a German word which is equivalent to it “sh! hush’ don’t let the > spirits hear you!” The superstition is that if you happen to let fall > any grateful jubilation over good luck that you’ve had or are hoping to > have you must shut square off and say “Unberufen!” and knock wood. The > word drives the evil spirits away; otherwise they would divine your joy > or your hopes and go to work and spoil your game. Set her again—do! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/german-speakers-um-berufen/236843.md?page=4)