“-witz” would not be a native Polish spelling, anyway. It’d be “-wicz,” corresponding to -vič or - vić in other Slavic languages.
Yeah, I know, but some people use it. Including my cousins.
Yeah, to my understanding, that’s more a Germanic spelling. It’s interesting, as the pronunciation in Polish of “-wicz” would be more like “-vitch” or “-veetch” than “-vitz” or “-witz.” That said, my own last name, while spelling is preserved, ends up something else in English, with the “w” as a “w” instead of “v”.
That reminds me of National League pitcher Joe Genewich. From The Big Show:
I had a hard name to spell or pronounce. It is pure Polish and the American boys up around Elmira, New York, had a way of poking fun at the Poles. Even when they did say ‘Jen-e-wich’, the boys insisted on putting an ‘h’ on the end instead of a ‘z’ and I have had to use it that way ever since. The correct spelling is Genevicz.
My dad was doing business with a Scandinavian named Pedersen. He kept correcting my dads pronunciation in a way that my dad couldn’t figure out the difference. Finally the guy said that my dad was saying, “Pederson” with an “O.” Apparently, one way is Swedish and the other is Finnish.
Hmmm. So my father should have been a Clarenson and I should be a Williamson.
When my great grandfather came from Norway, he had an unusual last name that ended with “son” but changed it to a common American name to try to assimilate into the culture better.
On the other hand, I have some neighbors who have an unusual last name. If you encounter anyone with that last name in the US, it is almost certainly someone related to them.
Speaking of names, on my mother’s side was one family with four daughters. None of the daughters like their first names and so all four went to court to officially change it to what they wanted.
And an old friend of mine by the name of Leo had a last name starting with O. He named his daughter in such a way that her initials are LEO.
Almost the exact same thing with my great grandfather; he was originally from Sweden and his name ended with “sen”.
My Swedish ancestors used patronymics right up until immigration in the 1880s. My great-grandmother, born in the 1890s, was the first generation to have a proper surname (Olson) instead of a patronymic, which in her case would have been Alfredsdotter. The Olof after whom the entire family is named only died in the 1870s.
“Mac/Mc” functions the same as “son.” So when Northmen and Celts blended, instead of Olafson the result was McAuliffe, as in the officer who told the Germans “nuts,” or the teacher lost in the Challenger explosion.
In origin, no doubt, but in Scotland these have been clan names for many centuries, not personal patronymics.
I’m sorry I know about it, because it takes me right out of the movie when I recognize it.
Here’s a glimpse into how it’s done by foley artists:
I’d like to see how they make some of the funny effects in cartoons. Like when a character gets hit in the head with a frying pan and the face keeps that shape, so he shakes it. Ee yiii ee yiii ee yii…
Tarzana, CA isn’t named after Tarzan. It’s the other way around. Edgar Rice Burroughs bought a ranch near the existing community of Tarzana in 1910; two years before he published his first Tarzan story.
Much of the national anthem of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the same as the opening theme from the movie “Animal House”. Both are based on the Academic Festival overture, by Brahms from 1880.
Do you have a cite for that?
This article
says Burroughs bought the ranch un 1919, about 7 years after the first Tarzan book (per the article he wasn’t rich enough to buy a place in 1910).
The LA Weekly account appears to be taken directly from page 150 of John Taliaferro’s Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs the Creator of Tarzan, published in 2002, four years after the Snopes article.
ERBzine, the Burroughs fanzine that has for decades been obsessively posting every conceivable tidbit about Burrough’s life, agrees.
You realize that the Lost Legends portion of Snopes isn’t serious, right?
That’s not clear at all. I’m really disappointed with Snopes.
Okay, now I’m really confused. The Snopes article on Tarzan/Tarzana has a link titled “More Information about this page” that goes to a page called “False Authority”. On that page, they seem to be saying that not even their own website should be trusted as the Infallible Word of Absolute Truth. Good for them. Really.
To the immediate subject at hand, they say " As for Mississippi’s doing away with teaching fractions and decimals in its school systems because kids find them too hard to master, that’s no more true than Kentucky’s imposing a licensing fee on uses of its name, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ naming his celebrated apeman after the city he lived in (other way around, actually), George Bernard Shaw’s penning a poorly-attended play called Closed For Remodeling , passengers on the Titanic viewing a 1912 silent version of The Poseidon Adventure while their doomed ship was sinking out from under them, the design of California’s flag being the result of “pear” being taken for “bear,” or mobile homes having gained their name from the city in which they were first manufactured."