My first name is Orga, my dad’s first name is Orga. He doesn’t know where I got it from, and I can’t ask my grandparents. So, umm… does anybody know where I can find out what my name means?
What nationality were your grandparents?
Haj
I checked a few places and it doesn’t come up (including lists of 20,000 names). Any more info on where the name originates from?
I did find the following but I’m not sure it’s much help. Take it FWIW:
hajario: My family comes from Haiti.
Whack-a-mole: Thanks for that cite, but it seems to be concerned with Orga as a last name. In my case, it’s a first name. An interesting tidbit nonetheless…
orga smash!
sorry, no help here.
Sqube,
in regards to it being a last name, maybe it originally was? My husband has a unique name (and he’s a III). It turns out it was the last name of his great grandfather’s friend.
Well… thanks for the help anyway. I guess I’ll just kinda dive into the Google abyss and see what happens.
I don’t know if this helps but perhaps this was a ‘change’ made by US immigration officials.
I’ve heard several stories from various people about US immigration officials fudging a name because the correct name was too ethnic to be intelligible to the dolt checking people in and they would write whatever they could gather of the name on the paperwork. This name would then follow the immigrant around and more often than not become their name.
Some examples…
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A friend of mine has a girlfriend from Russia (I think…some slavic state anyway). Her name is Irina but when she came through immigration the customs officials put her down as Irene. So, Irene is what she mostly goes by now and how she introduces herself (I make a point of calling her Irina as I think it’s shitty this happens).
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My great-uncle’s last name is Uek (German name). In Germany it is properly prnounced as ‘eek’ (as in, “Eeeeek…look at that scary monster!”). Once in the US everyone here pronounced it ‘YOU-eck’. Given the US feeling about the word “eek” and that everyone they ever met said ‘YOU-eck’ the second pronunciation stuck.
Of course, this all assumes your grandpa immigrated to the US and that some underpaid government robot fudged your name but I offer it as a possibility. If this might be the case you might search for Haitian names that sound like ‘Orga’ is pronounced.
You also might consider looking back through history and seeing what European settlers spent a lot of time camoing in Haiti. Perhaps some European got with a Haitian girl back in the mists of time and the name stayed and devolved to you. I don’t mean that to sound as crass as it might seem but certainly such things were not uncommon in history as this or that empire spread itself around the world. As such you might consider a more expansive search (e.g. Europe) than just Haitian names.
Not quite.
I agree that it was probably a last name turned first. It is also possible that you do not have the original spelling; names and pronounciations got changed (either inadvertantly or intentionally) all the time way back when.
Not quite what? Are you trying to tell me how my uncle thinks his name is pronounced? Not sure how you can say that but I guess you should take it up with my uncle. I imagine he will be surprised as that’s how he thought it is pronounced for the 90 years or so.