Smiths in India

[am77494]

@Acsenray

Well, searching for the name “Napetilon” turns up only references to the Simpsons and Jeff Martin’s classmate. So, is it a true story? Was there someone with this name? Does anyone else have this name? Even if it’s a real name, it doesn’t sound Indian to me.

Pahasadee Napetilon sounds like a Finnish name to me. Google translates Paha Sade as Bad Rain (finnish to english)

[Acsenray]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Jeff Martin probably didn’t know how to spell the name.

If the name was memorable enough for him to remember so many years later, I bet he knew how to spell it. When you’re in a class with someone, there are plenty of opportunities to see how your classmates spell their names. Indeed, you often see their names written before you hear anyone use them.

[gnoitall]

@Lemur866

I disagree. The point of surnames is to distinguish between people with the same first name. So if you have 10 Johns in your village, and someone says, “Go get John!” you say, “Which one? John the smith, John the baker, John the miller, John with red hair, John who visited London once, John who lives by the pasture, John who lives by the lake, John the tailor, John who lives by the hill, or John the son of Will?”

If they said “No, I mean John the Farmer”, you wouldn’t know which John because most of them are farmers. You need to distinguish all Johns who are farmers by giving them other names–Green, Waters, London, Wilson, and so on. A village has one smith and one miller, so you can call John the smith “John Smith” and everyone knows which John you mean.

So the most common occupation–Farmer–turns out to be an uncommon surname because it is too common to use as a differentiator.

I remember reading in Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue that the name “Miller” in America was most commonly the Anglification of the German surname “Mueller” (or “Müller”) by German immigrants, not as much a direct import from English colonists, because English village millers had a reputation for unjust weights and general greed. Bryson’s analogy was the modern lack of the occupational surname “Landlord”.

I can’t testify to the accuracy of his assertion (and I know he’s been criticised some for dubious scholarship in his popular books), but it’s an amusing theory.

[md2000]

@gnoitall

I remember reading in Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue that the name “Miller” in America was most commonly the Anglification of the German surname “Mueller” (or “Müller”) by German immigrants, not as much a direct import from English colonists, because English village millers had a reputation for unjust weights and general greed. Bryson’s analogy was the modern lack of the occupational surname “Landlord”.

I can’t testify to the accuracy of his assertion (and I know he’s been criticised some for dubious scholarship in his popular books), but it’s an amusing theory.

Going back to feudal times, wouldn’t “land - lord” be redundant? What else would a lord be? How many landlords were not lords back then, other than the obvious ones like holders of church land like abbeys? (The lead actor in Hawaii Five-Oh was Jack Lord…)

[the_diego]

I think smiths in India are called kamis.

[Nava]

@md2000

Going back to feudal times, wouldn’t “land - lord” be redundant? What else would a lord be? How many landlords were not lords back then, other than the obvious ones like holders of church land like abbeys? (The lead actor in Hawaii Five-Oh was Jack Lord…)

But a landlord isn’t a landed lord (and there were non-landed titles as well, in some places), it’s someone who rents out housing. Completely different thing.