IMO this answer is probably closest to the truth. I would add that how people chose to distinguish between the two “Johns” was random and it was anybody’s guess as to which method would stick. For instance if one John was shorter than the other then you could easily end up with “Short” or “Shorter” as last names. Many names are descriptive, if not altogether flattering, in this manner. I imagine which style of naming was prevalent (profession, physical characteristic etc…) probably varied from place to place until people became more mobile causing the polyglot of mixtures we have now.
The other important use of last names was as a means of determining paternity so many cultures have an equivalent of “Son Of” incorporated in the way names were assigned. So if Mac equals “Son Of” then the son of Donald would be MacDonald. IIRC “Ibn” serves this function in Arab countries. Hopefully, someone will be along shortly to clean up any mess I have made of the details.
I believe you’ve misunderstood here. At least, as far as I know there’s no such restriction in Denmark. However, in Norway (and possibly/probably other Scandinavian countries), some last names are protected so that you can’t change to that name. In other words, if my name is Hildea Hansen, or Hildea Extremelyraresurname, I can change my name to Hildea Olsen, but I can’t change my name to Hildea Anotherextremelyraresurname. (Or to be specific, I only can in some circumstances, such as marriage or documented ancestors named Anotherextremelyraresurname.)
There’s no formal status (what’s “cache”? do you mean “caste”? there’s nothing like that in Scandinavia) connected to these names. The protection is more of an identity thing – knowing that the Anotherextremelyraresurname you run into is actually related to you. (Not that I know why that should matter all that much. It’s not the most sensible law I’ve come across.)
When my grandparents came over from Greece in the 1920’s the folks at Ellis Island took one look at their name and said “that’s way too many consonants for english speaking people” and immediately hacked out a few letters. As a result, I have a unique last name. There are less than 100 people in the U.S. with that name, and I’m related to all of them.
Some immigrants, like my family, had no choice at all in their last name. Others were given a choice. Among my Greek relatives, it was quite common to “Americanize” the name by dropping off the typical greek ending (for example, Stephanopolis might become Stephan). Others kept the name as close as they could to the original Greek.
This was also true at Angel Island in SF which was the entry point for many Asian immigrants. According to my Chinese-American friends, many distinct family names were Americanized to “Lee” because the staff at Angel Island couldn’t deal with the Chinese names. In some cases it was just sloppy romanization, but in others it seemed like apathy where the immigration worker basically said “I can’t understand you so I’m putting Lee on the form.”
Interesting article, Walloon! The idea that the names tended to be changed later, by teachers, etc., makes a lot of sense – and jibes with a bit of family mythology on first names. According to said mythology, my mother (first-generation Lithuanian-American), who was born in 1917, was christened Alana, but her name was changed to the more “American” Helen when she started school. She went by Helen her whole life – but her granddaughter (my niece) was given the middle name Alana in her honor.
Hands off that law! I like it. My last name is protected, as there are only 24 people who have it*. My mother’s maiden name is protected as well, as is my paternal grandmother’s. My maternal grandmother has a free for all name (5985 people have it, it’s a common farm name, meaning ‘hill’.)
I can’t really see anyone wanting to take up my last name if they didn’t have a close ancestor having it or married “one of us”, in which case as hildea says, they would be entitled to a change anyway, so I guess it’s not strictly necessary, but then my last name is from a small farm, originally just a subfarm. The law also “protect” people who have a name with a touch of prestige, as long as there are no more than 200 people holding it.
Changing names to make them sound more "native’ is not a uniquely American habit; many Israelis change their surnames to something more Hebrew sounding, either upon immigration or even years later, especially when they plan on entering public service.
Thus, David Gruen became David Ben Gution, Simon Persky became Shimon Peres, Ariel Scheinermann became Ariel Sharon and Ehud Brug became Ehud Barak. In Israeli politics, made-up names may be the rule, not the exception.
Black is often shortened from “Blacksmith”. White is from “Whitesmith” (tinsmith). Also Goldsmith & Silversmith. Larger towns would have one or more specializing in each of these.
The many smaller villages probably only had a single person doing this work with all metals, so they were called by the generic “Smith”. Nearly every village had to have one, leading to Smith being probably the most common English name.
Li3 (meaning ‘plum’), and I have no idea how to insert Chinese characters, is an extremely common Chinese surname, and probably moreso in some regions. It’s gotta be in the top five, and I’m guessing it’s number two or three overall. And the most common surnames in Chinese account for a particularly large percentage of the population.
I would think most Chinese folks named “Lee” in the United States were Li3s back home, although I suppose it’s possible that there’s other, slightly less common surnames that would have been transliterated into the same thing. Of course, when the Chinese were pouring into San Francisco, there wasn’t an official Romanization scheme so there’s no telling how a name might have gotten spelled. The surname “Ou1yang2”, for instance, was sometimes changed to the Irish-looking “O’Young”. The most common Chinese surname in San Francisco is “Fong”, which comes from the Chinese “Fang1”, apparently either a common surname in the particular area immigrants into San Francisco came from, or else some dude named Fang1 had a lot of descendents.
A lot of color names, or so I’ve read, come from physical features. Brown, black, white, and gray are common hair colors, and green and brown are common eye colors. That raises the question of why Blue is such a particularly uncommon surname compared to the others, but it would explain why Yellow, Purple, Orange, and Red are not commonly heard. (I would imagine red hair was probably not that common among English folks in the middle ages, which might explain why it’s not a common surname.)
‘Orange’ and, if I remember right, ‘purple’, are recent arrivals to the English language. It’s quite possible that when surnames were being handed out, those words didn’t exist at all. Of course, the relative rarity of purple hair or eyes in middle ages England would have rendered it useless as a color surname anyway.
Yes. That’s what I meant. Cachet, prestige. Not status in an “official” sense, but in an informal, societal sense. Actually, I’m a bit more confused now than I was before – what exactly is being protected by preventing people from taking up certain family names? In Anglo-American society there is no sense in which a person (as opposed to say, a commercial venture) may lay claim to a name as an essential part of his or her identity to the extent that others may be excluded from using it.
Cool. I never knew that. How about the "-bert"s? Robert, Hubert, Rupert, … A similar connection?
And are the Scandinavian -son, -sen, etc. also called patronymics? Cause I am one.
I had to take a look at dictionary.com to find out what “cachet” means, so if nothing else, you’ve helped me expand my vocabulary
As for your question, frankly I don’t know. §3 of the name law (in Norwegian here) states that if you want to change your surname to one held by fewer than 200 people, you need permission from all those who have that name. (Exceptions for marriage etc.) But such names aren’t neccessarily special, and don’t neccessarily convey any kind of status. Using naita’s link, I found to my surprise that my own surname is rare enough to be protected by that law (there are slightly more than 100 of us), and the only thing that name signifies is that we’re descendants of people who lived on a specific farm. I did a quick test of a handful of names of friends and collegues, and most of them turned out in the “fewer than 200” category. It’s a small country, so odds are that people with rare surnames are common as grass here
They used to be, at least. Hansen meant “son of Hans”, Jonson “son of Jon” and so on. I’m not sure if they’re still called patronymics when they don’t signify the name of your father, but the name of some forefather a long time ago.
“Bert” comes from the old German “beraht”, which means shiny or brilliant.
[ul]Albert comes from adal = noble and beraht = shiny.
[/ul]
[ul]Herbert comes from heri = army or warrior and beraht = shiny.
[/ul]
[ul]Hubert comes from hugu = spirit and beraht = shiny.
[/ul]
[ul]Humbert comes from hun = young animal and beraht = shiny.
[/ul]
[ul]Kunibert comes from kunni = tribe or family and beraht = shiny.
[/ul]
[ul]Lambert comes from lant = land and beraht = shiny.
[/ul]
[ul]Norbert comes from nord = north and beraht = shiny.
[/ul]
[ul]Robert and Rupert come from hruod = fame and beraht = shiny.
[/ul]
[ul]Siegbert and Sigisbert come from sigu = victory and beraht = shiny.
[/ul]
