[HN Gopher] Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more
___________________________________________________________________
Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more
Author : JNRowe
Score : 940 points
Date : 2025-02-10 13:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.plover.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.plover.com)
| oniony wrote:
| I imagine many ~son names are Scandinavian imports. Scandinavian
| surnames, until quite recently, were formed from the (usually)
| paternal forename. Iceland still continues this tradition to this
| day, e.g. Bjork Gudmundsdottir (daughter of Gudmundur).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name
| JJMcJ wrote:
| The singer's name is Bjork.
|
| Gudmundsdottir just tells us her father's name. It's not a
| family name in the sense that e.g., Swift is for Taylor Swift.
| If she was Icelandic, it would be Taylor Scottsdottir.
| simiones wrote:
| Depends on how you define "family name".
|
| In the most pragmatic sense, as in "what should you put in
| the family name field in legal contexts", then
| "Gudmundsdottir" is her family name
|
| E.g. her passport will have that value under "Surname".
|
| And if she found herself in Iceland, in any paper where Bjork
| would write down "Gudmundsdottir", Taylor Swift would write
| "Swift", not "Scottsdottir".
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| We visited Iceland recently and asked a tour guide some
| questions about naming conventions; apparently that's fine
| for visitors, but to get Icelandic citizenship, you're
| apparently required to have an Icelandic name.
|
| (Granted, maybe there was a communication gap there; maybe
| it would only be required of any children we had there?)
| icepat wrote:
| This is an old law that was changed recently. It's no
| longer needed that you adopt an Icelandic name to obtain
| citizenship.
| arnarbi wrote:
| You used to be required to adopt an Icelandic forename -
| not surname. You still kept your original name (if you
| wanted) and it was up to you which one you used on
| practice.
|
| But as sibling comment says, that's been dropped.
|
| For surnames, anyone (including Icelanders) is allowed to
| use a family name if they have a claim to one, which is
| defined as having a parent or a grandparent carrying that
| name as a surname. So foreigners with family names can
| pass those to their children if they like and skip the
| patronym.
| amiga386 wrote:
| OK, then if Taylor Swift were _born_ in Iceland, she 'd
| have been called Taylor Scottsdottir, because that would be
| the naming tradition. And if she were a man, and her wife
| had children, they'd take the surname "Taylorsson" or
| "Taylorsdottir". But more realisticly, if she married her
| current boyfriend and they moved to Iceland and followed
| the Icelandic tradition, their children would take the name
| Travisson or Travissdottir
|
| However, if she moved to Iceland, at a time when they still
| used phone books, people would look in the phonebook under
| "T" for "Taylor", as they'd look under "B" for "Bjork", as
| in Icelandic society the "surname" doesn't have the same
| importance, given it changes _every generation_ and isn 't
| passed on like it is in other societies.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Even in Iceland, it's still used primarily in the same
| way that it's used everywhere else... disambiguation.
| Which "Taylor", which "Bjork", since given names are
| reused so often there are typically are many Taylors and
| many Bjorks.
|
| That their phone book chooses to use a different name for
| sorting doesn't change this, and given the nature of the
| second name, it would hardly be more efficient to use one
| or the other.
| amiga386 wrote:
| True, and even then, there are currently 7 Bjork
| Gudmundsdottirs according to their online phonebook... as
| you might expect
|
| https://en.ja.is/?q=bj%C3%B6rk%20gu%C3%B0mundsd%C3%B3ttir
| &pe...
|
| Obviously, there are a lot more John Smiths...
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| At least for those two women, disambiguation is not
| necessary.
|
| Checking Google.com autocomplete, Bjork is returned for
| the substring "bjo" and Swift is returned for the
| substring "t". Making her the eponymous global entity for
| that entire letter. Her father should renaming himself
| Scott Taylorsdad.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >At least for those two women, disambiguation is not
| necessary.
|
| This seems unlikely. Taylor is a popular-enough
| millennial name that there must be many women (and more
| than a few men) named that. If we all ran around using
| only first/given names, we would certainly discover the
| need for disambiguation. Even Bjork is nowhere near
| unique. You didn't think they were the only people to
| have those names, did you? Disambiguation isn't about
| whether Google returns the most popular search for a
| given name, it's about what you need when you're not
| looking for the most popular target. This is plainly
| obvious, and a little disturbing that you could find
| cause to argue about it. The redditification of HN
| marches onward inevitably.
| munch117 wrote:
| That says more about how Google has been personalised to
| you than about Icelandic phonebooks.
|
| By the way, you are misspelling the name. The dots are
| not decoration, it's a different letter.
|
| Edit: But I guess you know that, and o is just easier to
| type.
| mr_toad wrote:
| It's not a different letter, it's the same letter with a
| diacritic. It might be incorrect when writing in
| Icelandic but in English it's no more incorrect than
| using cafe instead of cafe.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In that case, the tail on the J is just a decoration of
| an I, and we can write Iack Iones.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| munch117 is right; it's a different letter.
|
| Compare French e and e, different vowels with different
| spellings, to pinyin e and e, identical vowels with
| different diacritically-marked tones. The French vowels
| don't have diacritics any more than i and j do.
|
| That's a graphemic definition of "letter". There is an
| alternative, collation order, but in Icelandic that will
| also tell you that o and o are two different letters, and
| o sorts after th while o sorts before it.
| simiones wrote:
| The French definitely don't consider those to be
| different letters - they are e with an acute accent and a
| grave accent respectively; an accent is a type of
| diacritic mark. There's also a circumflex accent in
| French, and several other vowels can take accents. They
| even have two other diacritic marks, the trema (two dots)
| and the cedilla.
|
| This is apparently different in Icelandic, where indeed o
| is considered a separate letter, not an o with an
| umlaut/two dots. But this is simply a convention of
| Icelandic typography - German for example also uses o in
| certain words, but they do consider it an o with an
| umlaut.
| amiga386 wrote:
| It depends on the language, and is ultimately down to the
| language authorities/users whether diacritical letters
| count separately or not.
|
| Some examples (please correct me if I've mistaken
| anything):
|
| (Modern) English: 26 letters; A-Z. AEDThOEWYs are no
| longer letters, replaced with alternative letters or
| digraphs
|
| French: 26 letters; A-Z. AACEEEEIIOUUUY are letters with
| diacritics. AE and OE are digraphs
|
| German: 26 letters; A-Z. AOU are letters with diacritics.
| Ss is a ligature
|
| Dutch: 26 letters; A-Z. IJ is a digraph
|
| Spanish: 27 letters; A-Z + N. LL is a digraph
|
| Danish, Norwegian: 29 letters: A-Z + AEOA
|
| Swedish, Finnish: 29 letters; A-Z + AAO. Finnish S and Z
| aren't letters and are replaced with digraphs
|
| Icelandic: 32 letters; A-Z - CQWZ + AEIOUY + DThAEO (all
| letters)
|
| Hungarian: 44 letters; A-Z + AEIOOOUUU + Cs, Dz, Dzs, Gy,
| Ly, Ny, Sz, Ty, Zs (all letters)
| munch117 wrote:
| Even in German, mixing up o and o or u and u is still a
| spelling error. They sound very different, even if they
| are in some formal sense the same letter.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > This is apparently different in Icelandic, where indeed
| o is considered a separate letter, not an o with an
| umlaut/two dots. But this is simply a convention of
| Icelandic typography
|
| I mentioned both phenomena. On the fundamentals, the
| letters are separate; that is the conclusion you'd come
| to, for French ee or Icelandic oo, by studying the
| writing system. According to formal authority, the two
| French letters are one and the same. This is a mistake of
| fact, but that happens all the time. (Compare French aa,
| where they're formally identical letters and the
| fundamentals tell us that the formal statement is
| correct. You might also compare 20th-century Spanish, in
| which "ch" and "ll" were formal letters that collated
| differently from the sequences "c-h" and "l-l". Again
| that agreed with the facts of the language; I believe the
| collation order was changed for the benefit of
| computers.)
|
| And as I mentioned and you agreed, in the case of
| Icelandic the facts on the ground and the formal
| statement by authority are in agreement, so there isn't a
| case to be made that o and o might be considered the same
| letter.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > their children would take the name Travisson or
| Travissdottir
|
| Why is it Travissdottir but not Travissson?
| ayewo wrote:
| dottir = female child (daughter)
|
| son = male child
| tmtvl wrote:
| thaumasiotes is asking about the number of 's'-es in the
| surname.
| amiga386 wrote:
| I'm not an expert in Icelandic orthography, but the
| general case is "<name>'s son/daughter", e.g. "son of
| Fredrik" -> Fredriksson and for <name> ending in "s", I
| knew "son of Magnus" -> Magnusson.
|
| But I should've checked, because I've looked it up now,
| and "daughter of Magnus" should be Magnusdottir. So we'd
| get Travisson / Travisdottir.
| weinzierl wrote:
| _Family Name_ has a common definition. It is a type of
| surname passed down through generations. So Taylor Swift
| has a family name, Bjork has not.
|
| That is also why passports have a surname field but not a
| family name field. Not everyone has a surname but
| conventions to deal with this vary.
|
| Similarly, passports use the terminology _given name_
| because not everyone has been christened and not everyone
| has a first name - for example I don 't.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > not everyone has a first name - for example I don't.
|
| > E-Mail is first name at my domain.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Good catch! Fixed it, thanks.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Or you could have "fixed" the comment.
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/first
| -na...
|
| the name that was given to you when you were born and
| that comes before your family name
| weinzierl wrote:
| I have a set of multiple given names, each of them given
| by a godfather. In our tradition and law they are equal
| because treating one of them specially is insulting to
| the godfathers (which you caught me guilty of).
|
| If given name or surname comes first is regional. Where I
| come from (Bavaria) traditionally the surname comes
| first, so even by that metric I wouldn't have a first
| name.
|
| Source:
|
| _Die Reihenfolge der Vornamen stellt keine Rangfolge
| dar. Nach hochstrichterlicher Rechtsprechung (BGH,
| Beschluss vom 15. April 1959 - IV ZB 286 /58) steht es in
| Deutschland dem Namenstrager frei, zwischen seinen
| standesamtlich eingetragenen Namen zu wahlen._
|
| [..]
|
| _Die in der Geburtsurkunde eingetragenen Vornamen durfen
| von den Namenstragern im privaten Rechts- und
| Geschaftsverkehr nach Belieben genutzt werden und sind
| gleichberechtigt._
|
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorname_(Deutschland)
| kgwgk wrote:
| > I have a set of multiple given names, each of them
| given by a godfather. In our tradition and law they are
| equal because treating one of them specially is insulting
| to the godfathers (which you caught me guilty of).
|
| I don't see how changing "first" to "given" lessens the
| insult to those N - 1 godfathers.
|
| And having "multiple first names" is not that rare.
| weinzierl wrote:
| All the given names are equal, none of them is first or
| middle.
| kgwgk wrote:
| All of them are first names.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Going by the Cambridge definition you linked above[1],
| indeed yes. I checked other reputable dictionaries and
| they are mostly similar.
|
| But by these definitions a middle would also be a first
| name, which is confusing.
|
| [1] _the name that was given to you when you were born
| and that comes before your family name_
| kgwgk wrote:
| > And having "multiple first names" is not that rare.
|
| Example: https://www.service-
| public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F882?la...
|
| Can you give your child several first names?
|
| There is no rule on the number of first names of the
| child.
|
| However, the registrar may consider that the multiplicity
| of first names is contrary to the best interests of the
| child.
|
| FYI Any first name entered in the birth certificate can
| be selected as common first name, whatever his order.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > the name that was given to you when you were born
|
| Try telling that to Queen Victoria.
| simiones wrote:
| Both on Wikipedia and on Merriam-Webster, "family name"
| is given as a synonym of "last name" or "surname". In my
| own language as well, "family name" is simply understood
| as a part of your legal name with slightly different
| rules.
|
| Perhaps in genealogy circles your definition applies. But
| it's certainly not how the word (well, expression?) is
| used in common language in English, and I bet in other
| languages either.
| cyberax wrote:
| Not really. It's a patronymic. Some Slavic countries also
| use them, in addition to family names.
|
| > E.g. her passport will have that value under "Surname".
|
| Icelandic passports don't have a separate field for
| "Surname": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_passport
| #/media/File...
| kgwgk wrote:
| > Icelandic passports don't have a separate field for
| "Surname"
|
| I may be missing your point but there is a "Surname"
| field in that photo, just above "Given names".
| taejo wrote:
| Moreover, in a later picture on the page you can see an
| example showing a -dottir name in that field (I had
| wondered if perhaps it was only used for people who
| happened to have a "real" surname as opposed to a
| patronymic, e.g. foreign-born citizens) https://en.m.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_passport#/media/Fi...
| cyberax wrote:
| Facepalm. I don't know how I missed that.
| msh wrote:
| Not until recently as such. In Denmark it became illegal to
| form them from the fathers name in 1828.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Wouldn't it be -sen, not -son, if it was Danish or Norwegian?
| And -sson (double S) if Swedish.
|
| I imagine the vast majority of -son Anglo surnames come
| directly from the English word "son", not from immigrants.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| A lot of names get transliterated and/or misspelled when
| people move around.
| plasticchris wrote:
| Someone with the last name Blank told me their family lore
| was that the (Ellis island era) immigration paperwork
| person just gave up.
| smt88 wrote:
| "Name changed by staff at Ellis Island" is a myth. Some
| people, including many Eastern Europeans, did change
| their own names to make their ethnicity less obvious or
| to shorten the name (Schwarzenegger => Schwarz, Stein =>
| Stone, etc.)
| nemomarx wrote:
| Certainly we could rule it out as a widespread normal
| practice, but transcription errors or spelling changes
| would happen, right? Especially from languages that have
| letters that don't exist in English.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yeah, I can't imagine that a lot of Russian or Polish
| immigrants - who wouldn't have spoken English - would
| have had any idea how to _consistently_ transliterate
| their last names.
|
| How do you transliterate Zhizhshchenko? Anything with a
| io in it? Or an y, or i? Was there a policy on
| differentiating between "e" and "e"?
| smt88 wrote:
| The transliteration was done by the passengers
| themselves, by the shipping company that transported the
| passengers, or by interpreters at Ellis Island.
|
| While many of these immigrants wouldn't have been fluent
| in English, they still would have had access in their
| home countries or through the shipping company to someone
| bilingual who knew English as well. It's not like English
| was some incredibly inaccessible language to someone in
| Poland or Russia.
| matsemann wrote:
| Is there even a consistent way to do it in a language?
| The Russian chess player Ian Nepomniachtchi is called Jan
| Nepomnjasjtsjij in Norwegian for instance. Must be so
| many ways to do it.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Depends. Some non-Latin scripts (eg Greek) have
| standardised transliteration schemes. Others (eg Arabic)
| have no clear standard, so the transliterations are
| wildly inconsistent.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _rule it out as a widespread normal practice_
|
| That's the part that's a myth: that it was widespread or
| normal. Of course small errors would happen.
|
| But the main reason it didn't happen frequently is that
| employees at Ellis Island weren't even recording anyone's
| name. They were just checking them against manifests that
| were written elsewhere.
|
| And when passengers were consulted about immigration-
| related issues, it was through an interpreter who would
| know the script and language of the arriving passenger.
|
| More info: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-
| changes-ellis-isla...
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I know it's a myth, but I wonder: did the myth become
| widespread because of the scene in _The Godfather Part
| II_ where Vito changes his name to Corleone at Ellis
| Island? Or was the myth already widespread, and the
| moviemakers got the idea from the myth?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I have a relative in the hospital with a fairly long
| Russian name. The staff can all be sorted into either the
| "not even gonna try" category, or the "let me practice my
| Russian pronunciation while I walk with you down this
| hallway" category.
| dzdt wrote:
| Literacy used to be much less common. If you don't spell
| your own name, what does it mean to misspell it?
| arp242 wrote:
| You said your name to the civil servant, and they might
| "misspell" it. That is: it's recorded "correctly"
| somewhere (e.g. birth certificate) but somewhere along
| the line it becomes "wrong" (registering your child,
| getting new papers, etc.)
|
| My surname is Tournoij, which I inherited from my father.
| him, me, and my brother have that surname: the entire
| rest of the family is Tournoy. Mistake during
| registration when he was born ("y" and "ij" are often
| pronounced identical in Dutch), and apparently it's nigh-
| impossible to correct afterwards.
|
| As to the original of Tourno(y|ij), my guess is that it's
| several degrees of misspellings from Tournai, a place in
| French Belgium.
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| My surname was originally -sen, and was changed to -son when
| they got to America due to a typo (according to my Grandma).
| Name came from Denmark
| elliottcarlson wrote:
| Interestingly, my paternal great-great-grandfather immigrated
| to the U.S. in 1868 with Carlson as his last name; later in
| life, my sister was born in Sweden because we happened to
| live there at the time, and her birth certificate was written
| as Carlsson - tbh I always thought my dad just didn't fill
| things out right and hence why she has a different spelling
| on her lastname.
| Tor3 wrote:
| In my grandfather's and great-grandfather's time it was
| common to spell names in lots of different ways, at the
| same time. Made for interesting research for my father when
| he took up genealogy.
| asveikau wrote:
| Scandinavians were pretty active on the British isles in prior
| centuries. It's a pretty influential source of English
| language. "Scandinavian import" sounds very modern, like you're
| buying a Volvo. The import would probably be more like: Britain
| and Scandinavia having a common ancestral source.
| nkrisc wrote:
| True, though there of course have been many different waves
| of Scandinavian migrants to the British Isles over the past
| ~2000 years or so.
|
| In an American context, many -son surnames likely are from
| modern Scandinavian migrants (within the past 200 years),
| particularly for anyone from the Great Lakes/Midwest regions.
|
| The site seems to have succumbed to HN traffic so I can't
| read it to see if it's specifically about surnames in the
| British Isles.
| troupo wrote:
| As is "Simme" for Simon and possibly many other "nicknames" in
| the article which are not nicknames but versions of the name
| used by family, close friends, or used when calling a child.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Obligatory: https://youtu.be/I-OOpZitfd0?feature=shared
| junto wrote:
| Likewise there are several patronymic surnames from the Welsh "ap
| <father's name> (son of) that have ended up as new surnames
| retained the "ap" in several cases, mainly in reduced form at the
| start of the surname, as in Upjohn (from ap John), Powell (from
| ap Hywel), Price (from ap Rhys), Pritchard (from ap Richard), and
| Bowen (from ab Owen).
| sorokod wrote:
| Oh nice! Does Upton follows the same pattern?
| nielsbot wrote:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Upton
|
| wiktionary says it's from "up" + "town"
| motes wrote:
| what's up town?
| wccrawford wrote:
| Nothing much, town. What's up with you?
| plasticchris wrote:
| https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/136933/difference
| -be...
| bell-cot wrote:
| Worth noting - "uptown" can also mean or imply a part of
| town that is upstream and/or upwind of most of the
| municipality.
|
| Centuries ago - when towns were full of domestic animals,
| and raw sewage just ran into the local waterways - living
| upstream & upwind were major perks of being well-to-do.
|
| Plausibly the ur-example of this usage is London,
| England.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| This is why the fancy shopping in the UK is on "The High
| Street".
| saghm wrote:
| I think "downtown" can also have somewhat mixed meanings
| depending on context as well. Growing up in smallish
| suburb, people used the word "downtown" there to refer to
| the busiest part of Main Street where a lot of businesses
| were, but after moving to New York, I had to get used to
| the fact that "downtown" was used to refer to "lower
| Manhattan", and what I would have expected to call
| "downtown" based on how I was used to it being used is
| referred to as "midtown".
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Part of this is that Manhattan has had a shift in focus
| between the two urban cores, from Lower Manhattan (where
| the original town was, and from which the city emanated,
| and still the financial and governmental core of the
| city) to midtown (which has become the cultural core of
| the city) over the last century or so. The language of
| geography takes some time to catch up.
| graemep wrote:
| Except the terms that took hold in London are "West End"
| and "East End" rather than up-town and down-town.
|
| It may have been used historically, but I cannot recall
| ever reading the terms in anything historical.
|
| So I think, same principle, but different words.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| More likely it comes from the very common place name:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton
| thih9 wrote:
| > Pritchard (from ap Richard)
|
| Also: Pratchett
|
| "The name Pratchett was a Welsh patronymic surname created from
| the personal name Richard."
|
| https://www.houseofnames.com/pratchett-family-crest
| s3krit wrote:
| My surname is an example of this! Pugh comes from ap Hugh
| (though more commonly spelt in Welsh these days as Huw)
| taurknaut wrote:
| > (though more commonly spelt in Welsh these days as Huw)
|
| Somehow this is also a saner spelling with English
| orthography. We should probably all use this spelling.
| frandroid wrote:
| Imagine the chaos if English had a phonetic spelling
| reformation like Spanish had a while ago...
| saghm wrote:
| > as in Upjohn (from ap John)
|
| Having never heard this name before, I definitely would have to
| resist the urge to make an updog-style joke if I met something
| named this.
| ahoka wrote:
| The would be "ap Dagbert".
| matsemann wrote:
| My surename is Svensson, literally "Sven's son". But patronymic
| surnames aren't used in Sweden/Norway anymore, so at some point
| we just got stuck with whatever father was the last in line, a
| bit weird. Maybe I should try to figure out which Sven it was.
|
| I guess the tradition of it being the man's name passed on
| means that's why there is no common surnames with *dottir as it
| is with *son? (Not sure what the english version for a daughter
| is).
|
| Had some Icelandic friends in school (which still has
| patronymic names, moved here after they were born), and it was
| for them somewhat problematic at times that the siblings had
| different surnames (Bjornsdottir and Bjornsson), as people
| don't assume they're family, and especially not that the
| parents both had different surnames again. Like school pickup
| with a teacher not knowing the situation.
| SiVal wrote:
| The English form of daughter was also -dottir, but it was not
| common.
| matsemann wrote:
| When thinking about names: in Norway it's quite common to
| take both parents' names now. So I'm MKS (initials), where
| Mats is my first name, K is my middle name being mother's
| surname, and S my dad's surname. I think it's great to have a
| connection to both families, and that my mother and dad
| combines instead of one having to "give up" some of their
| identity
|
| But what happens next generation? When a partner named ABC
| with two surnames should be combined with my name. Should a
| kid then be named DBCKS? And then it doubles every
| generation? Or should both parents pick one and pass on? And
| then which one? The father line as always?
| adrian_b wrote:
| If everyone had two family names, one from mother and one
| from father, then the two names of child would be chosen
| one from the two names of the mother and one from the two
| names of the father. The choice could be random or by
| preference.
|
| This would match the way how chromosomes are passed from
| the parents. Neglecting the crossover (whose effect is only
| that the sequence pairs between which a random choice is
| made are smaller than the chromosomes), for each pair of
| chromosomes one is taken from the mother and one from the
| father. The choice of which of the two chromosomes of the
| mother and of which of the two chromosomes of the mother
| are taken, is random.
|
| I believe that this would be a better system for naming
| people. A random choice of which family name to take from
| each parent might be preferable, to avoid the reduction in
| number of the possible family names, if some would be
| preferred much more often than others.
| jhrmnn wrote:
| And so we could follow the sex chromosome and
| mitochondrial DNA convention--you'd inherit the grandma's
| surname from your mother and the grandpa's surname from
| your father.
| adrian_b wrote:
| This is indeed a possible variant of the system.
|
| This variant could lead to a split of the set of existing
| family names into two disjoint subsets, one that is
| passed through females and one that is passed through
| males.
|
| I do not think that this split could create problems,
| unless at the date when the system would be introduced
| there would happen to be a serious imbalance between the
| number of family names carried by females and the number
| of family names carried by males, which might be then
| preserved by the system.
| hammock wrote:
| Interesting thought , tying to chromosomal inheritance.
| Since one of the chief uses of surnames historically was
| to track family (financial) inheritance
| tadfisher wrote:
| Are we considering mitochondrial DNA? Because that is
| always passed down from the mother's line, so maybe we
| should always use the mother's maiden name as the "last"
| name to preserve this trait.
| abecedarius wrote:
| There was a 70s science fiction future where customarily
| _both_ parents adopted a new last name when they married.
| Seemed the obvious sensible policy for women 's lib
| without a 2^N name-length scaling with the generations.
|
| I only know one person who's done that. In some ways
| there's been less future shock than we expected.
| kelnos wrote:
| I know a couple who combined half each of their original
| surnames to create a new surname. I thought it was a cool
| idea, but of course won't work for everyone's names.
| Their "invented" name turned out to be a fairly
| reasonable surname that is probably in not-uncommon use
| in general, so that worked well for them.
|
| I feel like that could _kinda_ work for my wife 's name
| and my name, but the possible new combinations still
| sound a little off to me. (We both kept our original
| surnames.)
| abecedarius wrote:
| Reminds me of the O'Whielacronxes! Though I'd be
| surprised if that was ever their legal name.
| pempem wrote:
| Villaraigosa did this - the former mayor of LA. He got
| divorced _and_ kept the name, so hard to say what happens
| down the line there.
|
| I tried supremely hard to merge my partner's last name
| and my own but each iteration sounded multiples worse
| than our own last names. We've kept our original surnames
| and given our kiddo a hyphenated one.
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| My wife and I did this. Seemed like an elegant solution
| to the problem.
| aegis4244 wrote:
| My partner and I did exactly that. She let me choose.
| Ended up with the surname from one of my favorite
| literary characters. Changed my first name to match as
| well. Happened to be a childhood nick name anyway, so
| I've always answered to it.
| twic wrote:
| How come you know one person, not two?
|
| I also know two people who have done this, but they're
| also not married.
| abecedarius wrote:
| They divorced before I met the one. Whatever the reason
| might've been, it'd be something like this, so why ask?
| Eh, anyway. It's cool that more of these cases have come
| up here.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Alternatively, you can make the choice to have
| matrilineal, patrilineal or both lines.
|
| My first wife and I hyphenated our names after we
| committed to naming any son we had with my last name and
| any daughter with hers. We only had 1 child (a daughter)
| before we divorced, but that daughter carries her
| mother's family name only, not mine.
| tempestn wrote:
| You could also pass the father's name to boys and the
| mother's name to girls. Or all children get the same
| combined name based on the father's father's name and the
| mother's mother's name. So both matrilineal and
| patrilineal lines would be propagated.
| gpvos wrote:
| I've always thought, in a single-surname system, it would
| be most fair to give girls their mother's surname and
| boys their father's (throw a dice for intersex children).
| pinoceros wrote:
| Courtney Taylor-Taylor, American songwriter and musician,
| hyphenated both of his parents' (married) last names as a
| joke on this.
| tadfisher wrote:
| We did this for our children as a US couple, and didn't
| even make the connection to Scandanavian practices (my
| wife's heritage, coincidentally). We likened it to the
| Spanish practice of having two surnames, without the
| confusion of having four names (due to Falsehoods
| Programmers Believe About Names [0]).
|
| [0] "People have exactly N names, for any value of N."
| --https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
| programmers-...
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > But what happens next generation? When a partner named
| ABC with two surnames should be combined with my name
|
| Look to Hispanic countries. They've been dealing with this
| for a very long time.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_naming_customs
|
| Generally, if a parent has two surnames, the child will
| take the first of them, so you normally will have two
| surnames, the first or only from your father, and the first
| or only from your mother. (Note that this algorithm does
| eliminate matrilineal names, because a child will
| effectively be receiving their two surnames from their
| grandfathers.
|
| From what I understand, if the genetic lineage is
| particularly elite, you might keep more. My wife grew up in
| Latin America among the Hispanic elite, and apparently some
| of her friends had more than two surnames because their
| bloodlines were extremely blue and they wanted to preserve
| reference to the lineage.
|
| This is a bit like how Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's
| kids have the surname Mountbatten-Windsor. The former is a
| cadet branch of the German House of Hesse, and the latter
| is a rebranding of the extremely German Haus Sachsen-Coburg
| und Gotha (and of course right there is a triple-barrel
| name, Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha.
| Fargren wrote:
| Yeah. I had to get a second last name when I was granted
| Spanish citizenship, which leads to my full name not
| matching my Argentinian ID. This generates (small)
| problems when flying between Spain and Argentina. Also
| partially due to my full now being too long to print on a
| boarding pass.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| I love paperwork, so I always handle passport
| applications and stuff for us, and whenever I have to
| fill out my wife's stuff, there's that part about other
| last names, and I get super paranoid trying to remember
| which ones she's officially used (she doesn't even
| remember, or even have records sometimes due to the
| nature of immigrating), because between Latin America and
| the US pre- and post-citizenship _plus_ getting married,
| it 's kind of a nightmare to remember when there was a de
| something, an y something, or just one surname, or two
| surnames.
|
| And then her parents are from _another_ country with
| different surname rules, throwing a crazy wrench in
| things when she has to deal with her other citizenship
| documents, which adhere to that other country 's rules.
| vidarh wrote:
| > trying to remember which ones she's officially used
|
| I had an uncle who was very proud of the fact that his
| birth certificate, passport, and the spelling he actually
| used for his first name all disagreed.
| pests wrote:
| Slightly related story but, I too, found out my documents
| were out of wack when I applied for financial aid in
| college. I originally had two middle names at birth but
| then it was switched to only (the first) one a year or
| two later. My birth certificate had both names, my
| drivers license the first middle name, and my social
| security had the second middle name. It was a huge pain
| to get fixed, ended up just changing the two easiest to
| change to match the third.
| freetanga wrote:
| Two names, two ids, two countries????
|
| "Tax Agencies hate this one trick..."
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Two names, two ids, two countries????
|
| Yup. Quite common with kids with one parent from a
| country using, say, the roman characters and another from
| an asian country (like say a France / Japanese mixed
| kid). If the (french) father goes to the french embassy
| or to France to declare the kid under one name and then
| the (japanese) mom goes to declare the kid with a
| japanese name, the kid literally has two _identities_.
| Not just two passports (which is highly common) but two
| identities.
|
| In less common case it can happen with just the given
| name being different in two countries: I know a dude who
| as a Portuguese given name on his Portuguese passport and
| the french version of that name on his french passport.
| They're considered by the authorities to be two different
| persons and he already got into trouble (administrative
| stuff) so now he's careful.
|
| Also note that it's a documented _fact_ that for fraud
| there have been people caught declaring a kid that wasn
| 't their: kid born at the hospital, quickly "rent" the
| kid to friends from the community, declare the kid as if
| he was born at home (by having a doctor come). Profit
| from welfare (in the EU) money due to the fact that you
| now "have" one more kid. One such case was uncovered when
| the doctor who gave birth to the kid was then sent later
| in the day to witness a "born at home" kid.
|
| I'm sure there are other cases: the world is big.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Just FYI in English doctors don't give birth to other
| people's kids.
| repiret wrote:
| More specifically, for the verb "give birth to", the
| mother is the direct object and their new born child is
| the indirect object. The verb "deliver" can have the
| doctor or midwife or so on as the direct object.
|
| I am bringing this up because I had to read your comment
| several times before I realized it was a comment about
| language use rather than about the role of doctors in
| England.
|
| Finally, to be completely pandemic, doctors can give
| birth to other people's kids. My wife, a doctor, gave
| birth to my sons; there was another doctor there who
| delivered them.
| pinoceros wrote:
| I believe you meant "pedantic" rather than "pandemic".
| alricb wrote:
| > From what I understand, if the genetic lineage is
| particularly elite, you might keep more.
|
| You mean like Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan
| Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima
| Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
| situationista wrote:
| Ironic that for all the elite lineage captured here, the
| one that he ended up stuck with is a very plebeian
| surname of non-hispanic (Ligurian) origin.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I would like to know more about the conditions under
| which Spanish family names became "X y Y" rather than "X"
| or "Y".
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Inheriting both surnames is traditional, picking one is
| nontraditional or foreign. The interesting option is
| between using a conjunction or not (Paul Davis Thefirst
| or Paul Davis y Thefirst), which seems mostly a matter of
| sounding better or, as Wikipedia suggests, disambiguating
| between first names and surnames (if it precedes the
| conjunction it is a surname).
| narag wrote:
| No, the surnames are Ruiz and Picasso.
|
| The rest are given names and nobody uses more than two.
| It was in the baptism record where all the saints of the
| days used to be added. I have a similar record with a
| dozen names, but only two given names in the civil
| record, of which I only use the first.
| fullstop wrote:
| Visions of Epic Rap Battles of History when you read it
| spelled out like that:
| https://youtu.be/WGN5xaQkFk0?si=aKCPFF_yfy6ly8Tb&t=61
| pgris2 wrote:
| A couple of years ago, in Argentina, my country, some
| idiot representative tried to create an actual law to
| force everyone to use the last name of both parents in
| strict alphabetical order.... and in the next generation,
| choose 2 out of 4 in strict alphabetical order, and in 10
| generations everyone would have a couple of last names
| like aaaa aaab
| f1shy wrote:
| Kirchner?! Hehe
| kubb wrote:
| It should be randomly selected and that would solve all
| the issues.
| mbg721 wrote:
| 10 generations is plenty of time to develop a caste
| system that discourages intermarriage.
| gorkaerana wrote:
| A cool feature of the Spanish naming custom is that it
| can infinitely keep track of surnames. E.g., following
| @alricb's comment below, let's consider Pablo Picasso,
| who's name was Pablo Ruiz Picasso [1], after his father
| Jose Ruiz Blasco [2] and his mother Maria Picasso Lopez.
| Surnames in the Spanish custom are concatenated with the
| following algorithm: father's first surname, mother's
| first surname, father's second surname, mother's second
| surname, and so on. In Pablo Picasso's case this would
| result in Ruiz Picasso Blasco Lopez.
|
| Or in Python:
|
| ```
|
| from itertools import chain
|
| fathers_surnames: list[str] = ["Ruiz", "Blasco"]
|
| mothers_surnames: list[str] = ["Picasso", "Lopez"]
|
| kids_surnames: list[str] =
| list(chain.from_iterable(zip(fathers_surname,
| mothers_surname)))
|
| ```
|
| Pablo Picasso's example is also a good way to touch upon
| your comment on how elites have used naming customs
| differently (I guess to distinguish themselves): Pablo's
| parents are listed in Wikipedia as "Jose Ruiz y Blasco"
| and "Maria Picasso y Lopez", as opposed to the standard
| "Jose Ruiz Blasco" and "Maria Picasso Lopez" (which I
| chose above). Similarly, Pablo was given the pompous
| birth name "Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan
| Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima
| Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso", instead of the more humble one
| (or maybe two) names that has been custom in Spanish.
|
| Tangentially, I would say piling up names like this is
| more of a Catholic tradition than a Spanish one, e.g.,
| the Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria-Este, born Maria
| Theresia Beatrix Gaetane, Erzherzogin von Osterreich-
| Este, Prinzessin von Modena [3].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ruiz_y_Blasco
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduchess_Maria_There
| sa_of_A...
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder if we can invent a new convention, of compacting
| last names. So, if John Richards and Mary Jones have a
| child, they can give it the last name... Jords. Or Richnes.
| It only really needs to go out for four or so generations
| anyway, at which point the folks who have a really strong
| attachment to the name will be dead. Plus the middle names
| provides a slot to put your family tree's most famous name
| anyway.
| javawizard wrote:
| This reminds me of Zach Weinersmith[0], of SMBC fame.
|
| He was originally Zach Weiner, and he married Kelly
| Smith[1] and they concatenated both their names together
| and adopted that as their last name.
|
| There's something I love about that.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zach_Weinersmith
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Weinersmith
| bjt wrote:
| Former LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa did the same. (He
| was born Villar. Wife was born Raigosa.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Villaraigosa
| wink wrote:
| Depends on the jurisdiction, for example Germany is
| pretty strict.
|
| If A marries B, then either both keep their names, both
| will be A or both will be B or one or both will be A-B or
| B-A. No other outcomes are possible, and if one of them
| was B-C before then the kids can't be A-B-C.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I know some couples who have gone this route-- both
| taking on a different name at marriage, either a
| combination of their names or a new one invented from
| whole cloth. It's definitely a workable option in terms
| of equalizing the "loss of identity" piece and ensuring
| that both parties are as all-in on the newly-created
| family unit.
|
| That said, it does also feel a bit more chaotic and
| potentially subject to widespread adoption of surnames
| that are trendy in popular culture.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I heard the story of Mr Alcock and Miss Bulmer getting
| married and discussing this option. They almost went for
| "Bulcock" for the shits & giggles.
| nilstycho wrote:
| I like the idea of union names [1].
|
| If you're AC and your partner is BD, then on marriage you
| choose a new name X. You become AXC and your partner BXD.
| Your child is EX. Then each child has equal connection to
| both parents. The cost is that you lose the deep history of
| names, but that history only existed for a single lineage
| anyway, so it's not as important as it seemed.
|
| (1) https://nothingismere.com/2013/11/12/solve-surnames-
| with-uni...
| bbarnett wrote:
| Women taking men's names has another side to it.
|
| When you think of it, women live forever, men die. 4B or
| whatever years ago, life arose. The cells which divided
| then, are the same cells as now. Women come from an egg,
| which divided over and over, cells specializing, including
| dividing and specializing as her eggs/ova which she is born
| with.
|
| The end result is that those cells are a continuous line,
| billions of years old. Men contribute sperm, genetic
| material, but no living cell.
|
| In a sense, women are immortal. Men die.
|
| So, maybe the name change is to honour those soon dead?
|
| (Yes, I know, weird take on it. It's Monday, I'm allowed.)
| jraph wrote:
| I don't think there's such a difference between the two
| kinds of gametes. Things are quite symmetrical.
|
| - Sperm is as alive as ova: not alive. What is alive is
| the combination of the two, after some development.
|
| - Both gametes contribute genetic material the same way.
|
| - Their respective lines are as continuous.
|
| > So, maybe the name change is to honour those soon dead?
|
| Of course, the name change has sociological / political
| reasons. It cannot have such biological roots since the
| policies around names were there way before we discovered
| this stuff. I'm afraid the reasons why we keep the male
| name in many places are simpler and way less poetic.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _I don 't think there's such a difference between the two
| kinds of gametes_
|
| One's a full cell with mitochondria, cell wall, and so
| on. The other just delivers genetic information. There's
| no symmetry.
|
| For example, all your mitochondria and its dna come from
| the female line. None from the male.
| jraph wrote:
| Yes, of course, there _is_ a asymmetry. The shape and the
| material, of course. Another example is that while sperm
| is constantly produced, ova are all there since birth.
|
| But this part:
|
| > The cells which divided then, are the same cells as now
|
| Seems quite wrong. Ova of one woman obviously contains
| part her DNA, not her mother's unchanged.
|
| Now, I didn't know about the mitochondria part,
| interesting, thanks for teaching me!
| fy20 wrote:
| Lithuania has interesting rules about the surname, as it is
| gendered, and the suffix changes when the woman is married.
| Typically the father's surname is used, and the suffix is
| changed to match the rules.
|
| For sons it's easy, as the surname doesn't change, it just
| ends in a masculine ending. Most commonly -as, but less
| common are -is, -ys or -ius.
|
| For daughters, the masculine ending is replaced with a
| feminine ending such as -aite, -yte, -ute, or -ute.
|
| I'm not aware of cases where the father and son have
| different endings, but technically you could.
|
| However where it gets interesting is marriage. Typically
| married women take the husband's surname, but they change
| the ending to -iene to indicate they are married.
|
| So a family with a daughter would result in everyone having
| a different surname, for example:
|
| Father: Tomas Zukauskas
|
| Mother: Egle Zukauskiene
|
| Daughter: Gabija Zukauskaite
|
| Divorced women typically take their father's surname, but
| use the married -iene ending as it appears more
| sophisticated. Well known people may keep their father's
| surname even when married, but change the ending.
|
| Gendered suffixes are used for first names too (typically
| Lithuanian's only have two names), but they don't change
| for married/unmarried. For example Paulius for a man and
| Paulina for a woman.
|
| Lithuanian's love diminutives though, so a parent may refer
| to their children as Pauliukas (the son) or Paulyte (the
| daughter). And to make things even more fun, the suffix of
| names changes depending on gramative case.
|
| In the media foreign names are usually converted to their
| Lithuanian counterpart, for example Donaldas Trumpas.
| skirmish wrote:
| > I'm not aware of cases where the father and son have
| different endings, but technically you could
|
| I am Lithuanian, and I never heard of that happen. This
| [1] also concurs: "Sons inherit their father's surname,
| with no changes."
|
| [1] https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Lithuania_Naming
| _Custom...
| hilux wrote:
| > in Norway it's quite common to take both parents' names
| now.
|
| What's going on in the name "Sven Magnus Oen Carlsen"?
| Tor3 wrote:
| That seems to be "Sven" - first name, "Magnus" - middle
| name, "Oen Carlsen", a combination of two last names,
| "Oen" from his mother and "Carlsen" from his father.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Adding to the list of weird traditions, I believe in
| Hungary the traditional way (nowadays not so popular?) was
| for the married woman to give up her ENTIRE identity (name
| AND surname), and just adopt the husband's full name with
| some suffix. Now that's insane.
| vitus wrote:
| > it was for them somewhat problematic at times that the
| siblings had different surnames (Bjornsdottir and Bjornsson),
| as people don't assume they're family, and especially not
| that the parents both had different surnames again.
|
| I've heard similar things with certain eastern European
| countries (Bulgarian has different forms for males vs
| females: Ivanov vs Ivanova), and also with various Indian
| populations where the child's last name is just the father's
| first name.
|
| Meanwhile I have the more mundane option where my father's
| first name is just my middle name.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Christen's son emigrated to America several generations ago
| so that's when the name stuck for me.
| cafeinux wrote:
| Are pat/matronymic surnames still used in the Feroe Isles? As
| I specifically know at least one _dottir_ , namely Eivor
| Palsdottir (which I love listening to, especially when she
| sings in Faroese).
| erk__ wrote:
| The only source I could find on this in a Danish journal
| says that between 1992 and 2006 9% of kids got
| pat/matronymic surnames, so they are probably still used to
| some degree.
|
| Source:
| https://tidsskrift.dk/sin/article/download/17070/15768/
| vidarh wrote:
| I know from genealogy when the patronymics "froze" in my
| ancestry, and also has a combination of farm names and
| patronymic surnames, and it's quite interesting to see how
| seemingly random the traditions were.
|
| (Incidentally, one of my great-great grandfathers was Swedish
| and the last one in that branch to take his fathers name +
| son. All of his children kept his last name; my own last name
| comes from a farm in Norway)
| Netcob wrote:
| Here in Germany, you often come across surnames that end in
| "-ski", which I assume come from Poland. That is also an
| example of getting "stuck" with a specific version of a name:
| in Poland, that ending would indicate that the person is
| male, while "-ska" would be female, and there's even one when
| referring to the family that shares that name: "-scy".
|
| So whenever I meet a woman with a "-ski"-name, I wonder how
| many generations ago that name got stuck with just the male
| form.
| arnsholt wrote:
| I don't know how it worked in Sweden, but in Norway I know
| that one of the most common conventions was for the surname
| to be the farm where you were born (so my great grandfather
| had a different surname from his younger siblings, because
| the family moved). But when farmers started moving into the
| cities, these names were looked down on so many country
| people took patronymics when they moved to the cities to
| obscure their background.
| internet_points wrote:
| Real patronymics were outlawed in 1923 in Norway (earlier in
| Denmark). Before that, naming tradition was that the given
| name (Erik) was the most important, and you'd add a
| place/farm name (Horsebay) and/or patronymic (Sigurdsson)
| and/or nickname (The Foot) if you needed to disambiguate.
| Given and patronymic were fixed, while farm names and
| nicknames could change over time. This works well in a local
| community, but made it hard for the central government to
| collect taxes and conscript expendables^Winfantrymen.
|
| ==See also==
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconym
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_modernism#Standardized_l
| e...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_variable
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis
| Terr_ wrote:
| Tangentially, the way the leading "a" seems to fall off makes
| me think of Rebracketing [0].
|
| Ex: "I found an ewt in the pocket a napron" --> "I found a newt
| in the pocket of an apron."
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Zye! (Haitian Creole, [zjo], from French _yeux_ [jo] "eyes",
| which in French almost always occurs in _liaison_ with a
| preceding [z], as in _des yeux_ [dezjo], _les yeux_ [lezjo],
| _beaux yeux_ [bozjo], etc.)
| joiojoio wrote:
| Don't forget the infamous ap Doc.
| foobarchu wrote:
| This one is fascinating, and something i'd never heard of
| before
| greggsy wrote:
| Interesting I never knew this.
| AlunAlun wrote:
| I came here to say exactly this. Delighted that it's the top
| comment (or at least it was when I saw it!). Other examples are
| Parry (ap Harri), and Pugh (ap Huw)
|
| I wonder if there are similar examples from our Celtic cousins?
| e.g. from Mac or Mc in Scotland, or the O'... in Ireland?
| shreddit wrote:
| I just heard about "Dick" being a nickname for "Richard" but as a
| non native English speaker i can not see the reason behind
| that...
| duped wrote:
| Dick rhymes with Rick short for Richard
| downrightmike wrote:
| And dick used to be short for detective, and used by private
| investigators like Dick Tracy. Then there is the implied Dick
| pun, like "Magnum" PI, where Magnum is a "Big Dick"
| nielsbot wrote:
| Wiktionary says this sense is shortened from "detective", not
| related to the name FWIW
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dick (see English etymology
| #2)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Wasn't a detective written as dic without the k? Clearly, the
| k was going to be used because everyone's inner 12 year old
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Also "dic" just doesn't look like an English word - compare
| kick, lick, sick, tick, etc. There are English words ending
| in -ic but they tend to be longer, Latinate ones.
| ASUfool wrote:
| Epic mic drop there.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| OK, that's actually a good example, but "mic" is a
| clipping of "microphone" and isn't pronounced the same
| anyway.
| dylan604 wrote:
| sic joins the chat
| FactolSarin wrote:
| A lot of old nicknames don't really make a lot of sense at
| first glance. The short answer is rhyming slang, and the long
| answer is there simply used to be a lot less names in English
| that were acceptable and commonly used. So, for instance,
| Richard being shortened to "Rick" is pretty straightforward,
| but you probably knew several Richards and Ricks, and you want
| to call them different names. So instead of Rick, you call them
| by a rhyming nickname, in this case "Dick." The same is true of
| "Rob" being short for "Robert," but "Bob" was too. Because
| "Bob" rhymes with "Rob".
|
| One of the oddest in this vein is Peggy, which is short for
| Margaret. Because Margaret would get shortened to Meg, and then
| rhymed with Peg, and then somehow lengthened back again to
| Peggy. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I'd take Peggy over "Gretchen", which is similarly a nickname
| for Margaret ("-gret" / Greta + "-chen", the German
| diminutive suffix, thus meaning "little Margaret").
|
| It might work in German, but to the English ear it sounds
| _horrible_ for a little girl 's name.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| https://tenor.com/view/gretchen-weiners-gretchen-lacey-
| chabe...
| dhosek wrote:
| In Slavic languages, it's not uncommon to do doubled
| diminutives, so Pavel - Pavlik - Pavlicek. (Or my ex-wife who
| didn't like the shortness of my name "Don" but liked the
| Czech vocative of it, Donicku1 which she then abbreviated to
| Icku, then she hispanicized that by adding a new diminutive
| to it, becoming Icquito.
|
| [?]
|
| 1. I'm named after my father and this is how his Czech-
| speaking great-grandmother who lived with his family until
| her death called him. On one occasion not long after we were
| married, the three of us were driving and I made some
| slightly tasteless joke and my ex-wife from the backseat said
| in a scolding tone, _Donicku_ which made my dead whip his
| head around in surprise /shock.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Now I am imagining Donald and Ivana Trump arguing
| toast0 wrote:
| As a Richard, I imagine, it started as Richard -> Rick. And
| then someone wrote the R with a real big top part and the lines
| at the bottom got overlooked.
|
| Got in the wrong government records like that, and soon enough
| it's a long explaination or you just go with it, and Bob's your
| uncle.
|
| But rhyming as a sibling notes is more likely (and insinuated
| by Bob) cockney rhyming slang is insiduious but nickname rhymes
| aren't quite to the same level.
|
| I'm not going with it, fyi.
| nonchalantsui wrote:
| From what I recall reading: Richard was a common name so people
| used nicknames often, and this became shortened versions
| Rick/Rich. Eventually rhyming into Dick/Hick.
|
| Similar for Robert -> (shortened) Rob -> (rhyme) Bob.
|
| Worth noting, the dick = penis connotations happened later on,
| so Dick was just a nickname!
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Rhyming nicknames are common.
|
| See also: "Bill" being a common nickname for "William" (far
| more common, in fact, than "Will").
| wrboyce wrote:
| I know a few Williams (I am also one myself) and they all go
| by Will. I do know a guy whose middle name is William and he
| goes by Billy. I do not personally know anyone who goes by
| Bill.
|
| I've only ever been called Bill once and that was by a US
| Border Agent which leads me to suspect this is a regional
| thing (the commonality, not the validity). For clarity, I am
| in the UK.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Bill Clinton, Bill Nighy, Bill Gates, Bill Cosby, Bill Nye.
|
| Other than Nighy, maybe it's just more of an American
| thing?
| wrboyce wrote:
| I suspect that is the case, yeah. I can think of maybe 3
| other (famous) Bills from the UK but a lot more from the
| US.
|
| Bill Bailey, Bill Oddie, and Bill Shankly - alas I don't
| know any of them personally!
| zdragnar wrote:
| Oh man, Bill Bailey would certainly be a treat to get to
| know!
| Affric wrote:
| By all accounts.
| wrboyce wrote:
| Absolutely! Nearest I have been is seeing him perform
| live, still a great pleasure; the man is a comic genius.
|
| (If you haven't watched it, he made a short series called
| "Perfect Pub Walks with Bill Bailey" which was great --
| I'd highly recommend if you're a fan.
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31434018/)
| amiga386 wrote:
| Bill Shakespeare, Bill Nighy, Billy Brag, Billy Connolly,
| Billy Cotton, Bill Drummond, Bill and Ben, Portland Bill?
| myself248 wrote:
| From my view (in the US), it seems mostly generational.
|
| My grandfather William went by Bill, but most of the
| Williams in my own generation go by Will. In particular if
| they're the son of a Bill, they use the different nickname.
| I wonder if their sons will go back to Bill.
|
| I've seen this alternate nickname scheme in a family that
| reused women's names down the line, with "Katherine" and
| "Elizabeth" taking turns and wearing nicknames left and
| right. Grandma was Katherine, grand-aunt was Eliza, mom was
| Kate, aunt was Beth, daughters were Kitty and Libby...
| toast0 wrote:
| > I've seen this alternate nickname scheme in a family
| that reused women's names down the line
|
| I've been doing a smidge of genealogy lately, and my
| dad's side of the family is full of this kind of stuff.
| They have a tradition of first son takes dad's dad's
| name, first daughter takes dad's mom's name, second son
| takes dad's uncle's name, etc. Not a lot of middle names.
| My great grandmother's maiden name is the exact same as
| her mother's married name, although some records have a
| shortened form, mostly for my GGM, but sometimes for my
| GM. For my kid, we tried to look around and pick a name
| that wasn't super common, but also not unique; I think we
| did well with the whole name, but there were three of his
| first name in kindergarten; thankfully with different
| last names, but the initial of their last names were
| sequential!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My father was William and was often called Willy as a kid
| but went by Bill among friends as an adult.
| Affric wrote:
| I think it's partially a generational thing. I know a
| couple of "Bill"s my age but couldn't count the "Will"s.
|
| My father and older age though there's not one person I
| know called "Will" but I know countless "Bill"s
| dylan604 wrote:
| Charles => Chuck in the same head scratching reason to me as
| well
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I once had a coworker try to convince me that Chuck was short
| for William.
|
| (His full name was William Charles Lastname, and he went by
| Chuck.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| That sounds like one of the names where "the third" rolls
| off naturally. I've seen a lot of "juniors" where the
| senior goes by the first name while junior goes by the
| middle name.
|
| How parents refer to their kids is an interesting little
| view into their world
| madcaptenor wrote:
| I think he was a junior. I don't work with him any more,
| though, so I can't ask.
| somat wrote:
| That is my case, same name as my father(no Jr however),
| so the family called me by my middle name, Which you get
| used to, to the point where I won't recognize it if
| called by given name. It is a bit confusing as I have to
| be mindful to use the correct name when doing government
| tasks.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Actually Chuck is fascinating: only found in America. It's
| easier to pronounce in Chinese and a lot of immigrant Charles
| landed first in Chinatown.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| If it's not obvious: "Dick" was a nickname for Richard long,
| long before it became a slang word for "penis".
|
| And the newer meaning is probably why almost no Richards go by
| "Dick" anymore.
| irrational wrote:
| My wife had an elementary school teacher Richard Weiner who
| went by Dick. You can't make these things up.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Richard Arthur Assman got more than his 15 minutes of fame
| due to his name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Assman
| arrowsmith wrote:
| No-one believes that I went to school with someone called
| Ben Deacock, but it's true.
| Huffers2 wrote:
| I still laugh occasionally when I remember an army career
| video I saw in school which featured (among other officers)
| a "Major Richard Head".
| irrational wrote:
| Major Dick Head must have been praying for a promotion to
| Lt Colonel.
| qingcharles wrote:
| My friend knew a Michael "Don't call me Mike" Hunt.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hunt
| SiVal wrote:
| Yes, Dick has been a nickname for Richard for about 800 years
| but only got its modern slang meaning in probably late-19th
| or early 20th century. It seems to have come out of the
| British military from the phrase "Tom, Dick, and Harry",
| which were such common names that the phrase meant every
| ordinary man. (Tommy was already slang for "British
| soldier".) And from there, one more evolutionary step for
| mankind....
| chuckadams wrote:
| WW1 coined "Jerry" for a German soldier, thus giving us Tom
| and Jerry
| hennell wrote:
| English does a lot of shorting, rhyming nicknames. We even like
| to lengthen the rhyming part back out to be even more
| confusing.
|
| * Richard -> Rick -> Dick
|
| * William -> Will -> Bill -> Billy
|
| * Robert -> Rob -> Bob -> Bobby
|
| * Margaret -> Meg -> Peg -> Peggy
|
| * Edward -> Ed -> Ned | Ted -> Teddy
|
| A lot of common names also have just a variant which barely
| seems related:
|
| * Henry -> Harry
|
| * John -> Jack
|
| * James -> Jim
|
| And you'll have to Google for all the nicknames for "Elizabeth"
| because I can't remember them all.
|
| What we lack for creativity in names themselves, we make up for
| with creative nicknames because every other kid is called
| Elizabeth.
| kej wrote:
| To add on to what you said, the rhyming is usually in the
| direction of easier sounds for children to make. Kids will
| struggle with R a lot more than D, so you get Richard -> Rick
| -> Dick but not David -> Dave -> Rave, for example.
| iteria wrote:
| Now all I can think is how there was a Janet in my family
| and none of us children could say her name, so she became
| Janice to us forever even as adults.
| card_zero wrote:
| And somehow, Mary -> Polly. This is "lambdacism" apparently.
| nemomarx wrote:
| mary to molly to Polly? I can kinda see the molly step at
| least
| tsm wrote:
| It's Mary -> Molly-> Polly, which makes _slightly_ more
| sense
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Thanks. I always assumed that Polly was a diminutive of
| Pauline.
| Jordan_Pelt wrote:
| Hank and Hal are also short for Henry.
| DavidAdams wrote:
| There are also a lot of nicknames for Margaret (Marge, Madge,
| Maggie, etc), I guess because there just aren't nearly as
| many biblical names for women/girls so people wanted to get
| creative.
| toyg wrote:
| Jack is also used for James, since it is the equivalent of
| Jacques in French and Giacomo in Italian. The apostle was
| actually called Yakov, after Jacob, which is the root of all
| those names.
| dmit wrote:
| Also the r->z substitution. Charles -> Chaz. Barry -> Baz.
| Jeremy -> Jez. Caroline -> Caz. etc etc
| rectang wrote:
| My initial thought was that in certain English accents,
| including some from the northern parts of the UK, the r is
| "flapped" or "tapped" similar to an r in Spanish. With a tapped
| r, the pronunciation of "Rick" is much closer to that of
| "Dick".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_/r/#V...
|
| However, further research has turned up that rhyming nicknames
| have been a thing going back centuries and "Dick" is one among
| many.
|
| https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/how-did-dick-become-sh...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH1NAwwKtcg
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_(nickname)
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| Pronunciations have changed with literacy and dialect. (ich)
| sounded like (aick) in proto-Germanic, making Richard
| phonetically more similar to modern Ricardo.
|
| Rhymes are also popular for nicknames, especially if you've got
| a village full of people with the same name, also especially if
| the rhyme sounds like something else. Ryke(r)/Rick/Rickon,
| Dyke/Deek/'Deacon'/Dick, Hyke... that's more of a surname, and
| perhaps more common to people who encountered the
| Scandinavians.
|
| There's also Richert, Ricard, and Ricart from the same root.
| Modern 'Richard' is softer (ich), almost like (ish), and may
| have been pronounced like Rishard in places before the modern
| compromise.
| gadders wrote:
| As well as boys names, girls names have some strange shortened
| forms:
|
| - Margaret -> Peggy
|
| - Anne -> Nan
| amiga386 wrote:
| - Margaret -> Madge, Marge, Maggie, Marjorie, Margarethe,
| Margherita, Greta, Gretchen, Margarita, Rita, Margot, Margo,
| Molly, ...
|
| - Elizabeth -> Eliza, Liza, Lisa, Liz, Lizzy, Elly, Ellie,
| Ell, Elle, Elsa, Liesbeth, Lizbeth, Lisbeth, Lizbet,
| Isabella, Isabel, Isabell, Sabella, Zabel, Bella, Beth,
| Betty, ...
| gadders wrote:
| Yes, was just listing the least intuitive ones.
| samspot wrote:
| Don't feel bad, native English speakers like me can't
| understand it either. FWIW I think those that explain it are
| mostly making up reasons.
| nkurz wrote:
| I had a friend who's last name was Hodgeson. Until this article
| I'd never really considered that that it meant "son of Hodge".
| "Hodge" turns out to be a medieval English nickname for "Roger":
| https://nameberry.com/b/boy-baby-name-hodge
| avvt4avaw wrote:
| Adam => Ad => Adkin/Atkin => Atkins/Atkinson
| bluejay2 wrote:
| You see this in Spanish a lot too. Diaz is son of Diego, which is
| still a common enough name. But there seem to be many more
| examples where the corresponding name is now rather uncommon from
| what I can tell. I am thinking of examples such as Menendez,
| Ortiz, Juarez, and Ordonez.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Lopez, Gomez, Gutierrez, Suarez, ...
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Both my endodontist and dentist have names ending in -ez, so I
| looked it up.
|
| I wonder if this is a common pattern across all cultures and
| languages - if surnames share some sort of phonetic pattern,
| does it almost always indicate a patronymic, or (whatever the
| term for your profession/place of origin) is?
| mathieuh wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_nominals
|
| It comes from the Indo-European genitive.
| mjd wrote:
| The examples that come to mind for me are Rodriguez, Martinez,
| Gonzalez, Nunez, Hernandez / Fernandez, Sanchez.
|
| Rodriguez, Martinez, and Hernandez are the 9th, 10th, and 11th
| most-common surnames in the USA.
| anoncow wrote:
| Wholesome read. I didn't know that Robin comes from Robertson. So
| Robinson is Robertgrandson.
| SamBam wrote:
| It just said Robin used to be a nickname for Robert, so
| Robinson (or Robins) is basically the same as Robertson (or
| Roberts).
| wrboyce wrote:
| You know, I've always wondered what the Dickinsons were up
| to... I much prefer this explanation!
| gambiting wrote:
| One other thing that has disappeared from common use(although I
| have seen it done among some "higher" circles still) is using the
| husband's full name for the wife here in the UK.
|
| So if you have a man called "John Bridgerton", his wife would be
| referred to in certain circumstances as "Mrs John Bidgerton".
| Like you'd get an invite to the King's Ball, and it would say:
|
| "Hereby inviting: Mr John Bridgerton and Mrs John Bridgerton"
| cjs_ac wrote:
| A real-life example of this is Princess Michael of Kent.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Very old Americans at least still do this as well. My 100 year
| old grandma insists that using the wife's first name is only
| appropriate when the husband is deceased.
|
| My wife has a 100 year old grandfather and he until recently
| followed the rule as well. His last letter he addressed to my
| wife specifically using her own first name. This was a strange
| way to learn of my own death.
| triyambakam wrote:
| That's funny.
|
| My grandmother does it too to my wife. I think the fact that
| they write letters is also something very old Americans still
| do.
| linsomniac wrote:
| King of the Hill did it: "Hey Hank. Hey Hank's Wife."
| ziotom78 wrote:
| A memorable occurrence in this happens in "Sense and
| Sensibility", Part III, Chapter XII, when Elinor Dashwood
| learns that the man she loved and believed had just married was
| in fact free:
|
| "Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?"
|
| "At Longstaple!" he replied, with an air of surprise. "No; my
| mother is in town."
|
| "I meant," said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, "to
| enquire after Mrs. Edward Ferrars."
|
| She dared not look up; but her mother and Marianne both turned
| their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked
| doubtingly, and, after some hesitation, said,-- "Perhaps you
| mean my brother: you mean Mrs.--Mrs. Robert Ferrars."
| ziotom78 wrote:
| Here is a fantastic rendition of the scene:
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=IuHZPR8e5c8
| ninalanyon wrote:
| The whole film is marvellous, Emma Thompson's adaptation is
| brilliant.
| jtmoulia wrote:
| I don't know if this was intentional, but I appreciate
| that you dropped another example with "Thompson"
| selimthegrim wrote:
| This is done still on wedding invitations in the US
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| Many of the gift checks for my wedding were made out this
| way. It made it very inconvenient to cash them since there
| was not yet such a person by one of the names on those
| checks, and the bank wouldn't deposit them. They insisted the
| checks would have to say "Mr. OR Mrs." Who thinks of that
| when sending a wedding gift? Most annoying to me was that I
| had never heard of anyone having this difficulty before, but
| it must happen every day.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I did run into this with one teller at a bank we use. Wife
| showed them a copy of our marriage certificate on her phone
| and the teller said, congrats and that was that. We had 0
| issues with online check submission though.
| t-3 wrote:
| That's because online doesn't usually check the names,
| just the numbers. They wouldn't know unless you called in
| and told them, such as in case of an error.
| toast0 wrote:
| The ATM check frontend is much less picky than the teller
| check negotiation frontend. And the backend generally
| doesn't care too much either. To my recollection, I've only
| had one check ever refused by the ATM backend, and that was
| because the issuer hadn't signed it (on accident... I got
| the check back, took it to the issuer and they signed it on
| the spot, no harm done). I have had ATMs refuse a State of
| California Warrant (like a check, but not because it's
| drawn on the State's General fund), but a teller took it,
| no problem.
| xp84 wrote:
| UGH this reminds me I have one of those fricking
| Warrants, for 19 cents, sitting on my desk. I finally
| found out that mobile deposit can't handle them because
| they have no account number whatsoever -- merely a
| routing number and a check number, so the 'check
| processing' system can't make any sense of them.
|
| (I need to deposit it because I want to get my full name
| and address out of the unclaimed property register, for
| obvious privacy reasons)
| toast0 wrote:
| The warrant I had trouble with was also unclaimed
| property.
|
| I recall depositing a warrant at an ATM in California
| with no problems, so it's worth trying, but the ATM I
| tried in Washington didn't like it.
| Benanov wrote:
| Having had a bit of it with my wife (she changed her name)
| my policy is to make the check out to the person who is not
| changing their name.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| I still think it's crazy a first world country is using
| cheques regularly.
| xp84 wrote:
| Well, that's what happens when all the other options were
| invented by companies that are scheming to scam a cut of
| every transaction -- not to mention checks are the only
| way that doesn't require the receiver to give some awful
| private company all your information in order to get
| paid.
| lkbm wrote:
| Funny thing is, people think their bank account number is
| private, but it's printed on every check they write.
| xp84 wrote:
| Yeah, one of those funny legacy things from the days when
| convenience and cost of storing alternate identifiers
| dictated designs. Just like how my SSN was printed on my
| school ID that I presented at the library and dining hall
| 20 years ago. NBD!
| xp84 wrote:
| Btw by private info though, I just meant you need to
| actually create an account to use Zelle, PayPal, cash
| app, Apple Pay, etc. The account number isn't as big a
| deal, just that it is annoying to have to make an account
| and agree to a 200-page EULA, with a random third party
| company you didn't choose, just to receive some money
| you're owed.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| This is one of those secret versus private things that
| pops up now and then.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| My bank doesn't charge any fees for transfers, and our
| EFTPOS fees are not allowed to be above what it costs the
| merchant. No private companies (beyond the bank
| themselves) have access to private information.
| toast0 wrote:
| No, we don't use cheques. We use checks. Much better.
| lkbm wrote:
| Chase online deposit was fine with it for us. I'm pretty
| sure quite a few of them were "and" and some were probably
| "[me] and [my wife's completely made up name]". (She
| doesn't go by her legal name, first or last, though now
| that we're married she intends to go through the legal
| process to update.)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I deposited a few of these in Louisiana (can't remember
| if it was online or not but my account was originally
| opened in Oregon so who knows if that part of ACH is more
| familiar with them)
| adzm wrote:
| Oddly enough this is pretty much the only time this still
| seems to be encountered
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It's only one of the few places where people send an RSVP
| labeled as such, and an explicit response is required.
| Benanov wrote:
| When people we know are getting married ask us for our
| address, I explicitly reply that we are not to be addressed
| in that manner (I find it somewhat insulting).
|
| I can tell if the couple is doing addressing themselves or if
| they're having an older relative do it by if our instructions
| have been followed.
| stoneman24 wrote:
| A while ago, my wife and I were invited to the Royal Garden
| Party at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, in the
| presence of the late Queen. Very nice invitation in the form of
| Mr <me> and Mrs <me>.
|
| As it was in recognition of my wife's charitable works, She was
| not pleased at such a form of address. But we still went.
| bregma wrote:
| In many American weddings it is still traditional for the
| bride's father to "give her away" to the groom, thus
| transferring chattel ownership.
| wahern wrote:
| I suspect that's a reductive "just-so" story that happens to
| fit into some popular feminist narratives, though coming on
| the heels of some adjacent theories popular among men in the
| 18th and 19th centuries that misconstrued the legal history
| of coverture.
|
| It's difficult to find credible information using Google
| these days, but I would guess that the giving away of the
| bride is a custom more tied to exogamy--the practice of
| marrying outside one's social group (tribe, town, etc). In
| cultures that practice exogamy, it's typically either the
| young men (male exogamy) or the women (female exogamy), but
| not both, who would leave the group to marry. Giving away the
| bride seems more about relinquishing social and familial ties
| in the context of female exogamy. In some cultures, e.g.
| traditional chinese female exogamy AFAIU, the bride and her
| old family (or whole clan?) were strictly forbidden to
| communicate after marriage.
|
| If women were just chattel (or something approximating
| chattel--there's a hole spectrum in-between, and overusing
| "chattel" this way diminishes the gravity of actual chattel
| slavery, IMO) then we wouldn't expect to see dowries (the
| bride's family giving the new couple money and gifts), but
| only brideprices (the groom's family giving the bride's
| family money and gifts). Yet AFAIU dowries were more the norm
| in European culture, notwithstanding there were times,
| places, and contexts where brideprices also existed,
| exclusively or in combination. And nobody says the groom is
| "chattel" just because the bride's family is transferring
| assets.
|
| Interestingly, while I think female exogamy was historically
| much more common around the world, modern American culture
| seems to skew toward male exogamy, at least along some
| dimensions. It's never discussed in those terms[1], but you
| can arguably see it in statistics showing how the proximity
| and frequency of contact with extended family skews very
| heavily toward the wife's family.
|
| [1] To the extent it's discussed, it's in feminist narratives
| and termed "emotional labor". It's not mutually exclusive
| with the anthropological concept. Male/female exogamy is
| value neutral, and feminist discourse is just slapping a
| value on it, in this case a negative value.
| hammock wrote:
| I enjoyed your comment
|
| >Interestingly, while I think female exogamy was
| historically much more common around the world, modern
| American culture seems to skew toward male exogamy, at
| least along some dimensions. It's never discussed in those
| terms[1], but you can arguably see it in statistics showing
| how the proximity and frequency of contact with extended
| family skews very heavily toward the wife's family.
|
| Why do you believe this is so?
| wahern wrote:
| On reflection, I think I'm mixing some concepts up.
| Regardless of the sex exogamy pattern (or related
| patrilocal/matrilocal pattern, where I think female
| exogamy correlates with patrilocal residency--living with
| or near the husband's family) I would think women would
| be doing the "emotional labor" regardless, and for the
| stereotypical biological predisposition reasons. As for
| why modern culture might be skewing matrilocal, once
| reason might simply be because it lessens the burden of
| emotional labor. In patrilocal systems the woman is
| dropped into an alien network of relationships, yet bears
| the burden of managing those relationships and adhering
| to any divergent customs and norms. As with the Chinese
| female exogamy example (patrilocal is maybe a more apt
| term, but I was introduced to it in terms of female
| exogamy) where the woman was forbidden from contact with
| her birth clan, patrilocal cultures might tend to impose
| even stricter norms and taboos to keep the woman engaged
| in managing her husband's family's relationships, as
| opposed to finding comfort in her childhood
| relationships. As sex and gender norms are loosening in
| many respects (but not all, and not as much we like to
| think), it might be that the pressures for marriages to
| fallback to matrilocal patterns are overcoming the
| pressures for patrilocality. But we're like hundreds, if
| not a thousand plus years, into major upheavals in these
| dynamics wrt Western European marriage dynamics in
| particular, so....
|
| In the literature the motivations behind these systems is
| more often discussed in terms of avoiding incest,
| managing intergenerational wealth, exchanging labor (can
| cut both ways in terms of exploiting men or women) and
| other biological and cultural needs. The interplay
| between these seem pretty complex, but especially as we
| get further away from traditional hunter-gather,
| pastoral, and agricultural communities these dynamics may
| be weakening relative to other, more individualized
| factors, like convenience.
| hammock wrote:
| Couple thoughts - for your reflection - apropos of
| nothing:
|
| 1) On motivations/intergenerational wealth, there is the
| phenomenon of your father-in-law giving you a job at his
| big firm (or farm, or however that plays out), which is
| as common as it is commonly looked down upon (maybe?)
|
| 2) I wonder if the matrilocal tendency we see today was
| as common in the first half of the 19th cent (or
| earlier), or if it flipped , e.g. in the 1970s
| wahern wrote:
| I've had similar questions like yours but AFAICT there's
| a real dearth of data and research that goes beyond
| broad, general trends.
|
| There is a lot of research (both value neutral as well as
| from conservative and liberal lenses) studying both the
| US and various other countries and communities showing
| correlation between (and often arguing causation of)
| matrilocality on the one hand and the breakdown or
| absence of institutional marriage and/or economic
| codependence. When I wrote the above I had more in mind
| upper middle class norms where marriage and economic
| codependency are still quite strong. But in many cases
| the most proximate cause of matrilocality is pretty
| obvious--lack of cultural structures/pressures to support
| viable alternatives.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > thus transferring chattel ownership.
|
| That's reductive _and_ insulting to the women who chose to
| maintain this tradition. In many cases it 's a very moving
| and symbolic gesture, akin to a groom's dance with his
| mother.
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| Just recently I read about the etymology of the Japanese Ao san
| Okusan = "your wife"
|
| Until Japan started modernizing in the 19th century, it was
| considered rude to call people by their real names. If you
| asked your lord, "So how's Sharon doing," those may have been
| your last words.
|
| So everyone called each other by their position names or by
| their nicknames if they were close, and for women in noble
| families or samurai families, it was usually the place they
| lived.
|
| In ancient times, nobles had manors that looked like this. This
| is the entrance, the garden, the main building, and this
| building in the north of it was always the wife's residence. So
| they often called her "Kita-no-kata," the lady in the north.
|
| Now, nobles built their houses based on a fung-shuei-like
| belief that Japanese shamans made everyone believe, like how
| rich people communities are into weird stuff, so the wife's
| residence was almost always in the north.
|
| But centuries later, in the age of samurai, priorities shifted.
| They were invading each other like there was nothing else to
| do, so they built their houses and castles with defence in mind
| first and foremost.
|
| So the wife's room wasn't necessarily in the north anymore. So
| they were like, "So, how is the... umm... lady in the depths of
| your house?" Ao Fang Yang haikagaoGuo goshidesukana?
|
| Ao Fang Yang means the lady in the depths, and it was
| shortened to Ao Yang , after the samurai age, and while Ao Yang
| is still used now, we needed a slightly less formal version, so
| now if is often Ao san. Deep-san!
|
| source:
| https://www.facebook.com/metroclassicjapanese/posts/the-etym...
| mjd wrote:
| I once wasted a couple of hours trying to find information
| about my great-grandmother, Selma Brenner Rauh. I found
| nothing.
|
| ... until I started looking for Mrs. Sidney Rauh ...
| derekp7 wrote:
| I recall encountering this in the 70's, on a Flintstones
| episode from the 60's where a scene referenced Mrs. Fred
| Flintstone and Mrs. Barney Rubble. Confused the heck out of me
| at a young age.
| dlbucci wrote:
| I learned about this from my mother, who, like my father, is a
| doctor. Invitations addressed to "Dr. and Mrs. Father
| Lastnames" were a source of great offense to her!
| cvoss wrote:
| If you go to a shop in a small town in America that sells used
| goods, you will almost certainly find a few editions of the
| local church cookbook. Depending on its age, it will likely
| refer to many of the women who submitted recipes in this
| manner. You could probably even date the cultural transition by
| comparing the books across a few decades.
| hilux wrote:
| I believe the more typical reference would be: "Mr and Mrs John
| Bridgerton"?
| dhosek wrote:
| It had somehow never occurred to me before reading this that
| Dixon = Dickson and Nixon = Nickson.
| harry8 wrote:
| There's an English cricketer called Ben Duckett. His nickname
| among Australian fans when playing for their local team appears
| to be "Autocorrect"
|
| Autocorrectson sounds like a fine family name.
|
| In England it'd be "Duckyson"
|
| I wonder if there are real examples of more creative nicknames
| becoming surnames.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| _Grosvenor_ , from _gros venor_ , 'fat hunter'.
| card_zero wrote:
| That's excellent. I'm intrigued by Beaglehole, Clutterbuck,
| Cronk, Dingus, Eggink, Footlick, Gimbel, Hipkiss, Hollobone,
| Limp, Midgette, Mincey, Muddle, Nettleship, Noblin, Ogletree,
| Owl, Pardon, Pickles, Puffinburger, Riddles, Smelley,
| Spankie, Splatt, Thicknesse, Toadvine, Tremblay, Tubby,
| Twaddle, Twitt, Underdown, Whatmuff, Windy, Winker, and
| Wrong, but they probably mostly have mundane and logical
| origins. The ancestral Pickles probably just pickled things a
| lot, for instance.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Unsurprisingly the family behind this Norman French
| aristocratic name owns most of west London. The Duke of
| Westminster is one Hugh Grosvenor.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| "Autocorrect" as in "ducking autocorrect won't let me curse"?
| harry8 wrote:
| Something like that I guess.
| bpoyner wrote:
| Along these lines, 'Mc' and 'Mac' mean 'son of' in Scottish and
| Irish surnames.
| dghf wrote:
| And similarly 'O' for 'descendant of' in Irish surnames (e.g
| O'Neill).
| layer8 wrote:
| Also the famous greek hunter O'Ryan. ;)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| There is an unusual Chinese family name, Ou Yang ouyang,
| which is sometimes anglicized into the form O'Young.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Like O'Bama?
| psim1 wrote:
| Martin, son of Fly, the first time traveler and inventor of
| rock-and-roll music.
| soperj wrote:
| Technically Einstein was the first time traveler. He traveled
| one minute into the future.
| fuzz_junket wrote:
| Technically Doc Brown was alive in 1885, having travelled
| there from 1955, so he was the first time traveller by a
| good 100 years before Einstein.
| myroon5 wrote:
| Source: https://youtu.be/nNM9nzeifuI
| raincom wrote:
| "Fitz" is another patronymic: Fitzsimmons, Fitzgerald,
| Fitzpatrick, Fitzsimmons, etc.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitz
| fjjjrjj wrote:
| My Norwegian ancestors arrived in the US as Nordhus surname, and
| left immigration with a completely unrelated -son surname. That
| happened a lot and I understand it's because they didn't speak
| English and the immigration officers had busy lines to process so
| they used a default name of sorts on the paperwork.
| sparky_z wrote:
| This is a common myth that often shows up in family lore and
| has bled into popular culture, but it simply isn't true.
| Historians are unanimous that it didn't happen (with perhaps
| some extraordinarily rare edge cases).
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-...
|
| https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-isla...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island_Special
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yup. It was common in the 1800's and early 1900's for
| immigrants to change their last name to become more
| "American", to assimilate better.
|
| I don't believe this was a common thing to do upon arrival --
| it was more like, when they wanted to open a business and be
| perceived as more American, more established, more
| trustworthy. It might not even be the immigrants themselves
| but their second-generation children, or even third
| generation.
|
| If you visit a cemetery with lots of 1800's gravestones, it's
| pretty wild to see crazy diversity of last names from all
| over Europe, that we just don't have any more. Ellis Island
| didn't simplify or change anything. And which shows that in
| many of those cases, it was indeed the children who changed
| their name.
| FactolSarin wrote:
| My family's last name was probably Schaefer in Germany. The
| earliest graves in America show them as Scheffert instead
| but shortly after they became "Shuford" which I guess they
| thought sounded more English (they were here pre-
| Revolution).
|
| I always find it funny they did such a bad job of
| anglicizing it. Shuford doesn't really sound any more
| English to my ears.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Ha, that's a funny one -- Shuford is an unusual one. If
| they'd gone with "Shefford", it would have sounded 100%
| Anglicized:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shefford,_Bedfordshire
| soneca wrote:
| I didn't know English had a diminutive suffix (-kin). Is it used
| still in common English?
|
| We have it Portuguese (-inho/-inha) and I find them so useful. It
| always seemed a missing feature of English.
|
| Also, is there an augmentative suffix as well that I don't know
| about?
| rrauenza wrote:
| pumpkin and munchkin come to mind. Googling, apparently napkin
| is also from that.
| rbalicki wrote:
| The History of the English language podcast talks about the
| word napkin in multiple places:
|
| [1] Podcast 110 https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2018/04/0
| 7/episode-110-d...
|
| [2] Podcast 133 https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2020/01/2
| 1/episode-133-b...
| lolinder wrote:
| English has a few diminutive suffixes. Which one is used
| depends a lot on the shape of the word and the era, but the
| most common one today is -y.
|
| So a child's toy might be Beary, and the kid might go by
| Johnny. We also have -ling, as in duckling, and a whole bunch
| of less common ones [0].
|
| You're right, though, that we don't use our diminutives nearly
| as often as the Iberian languages do. If you tried to use them
| as much as you would in Portuguese you would definitely not
| sound like a native speaker, but they do exist.
|
| Mostly they're used in the register of speech that we use when
| speaking to very young children (i.e. "baby talk"), in
| nicknames, or in older words that acquired a diminutive a long
| time ago and now register as just a word on their own.
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_diminutive...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The most common one might be the diminutive for a pot -
| potty. Potling or potlet would have been much better in my
| opinion.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Another example: "kiddie pool".
|
| Also, I'll often refer to my child as "kidling" or
| "childling". English can be a fun language to play in.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| '-let' is pretty common as well. (Applet, hamlet and so on)
| mjd wrote:
| And "-let" like in eyelet, bracelet, rivulet, etc.
| o11c wrote:
| -ette is still productive but collides with the female sense
|
| -kins (I've only heard it with an s) is arguably still
| productive, but in very limited contexts - unlike other
| diminutives, it seems to _only_ be used when an actual small
| baby is involved, not for mere endearment, though in this
| context it can be used either for the baby or for the people
| around the baby.
|
| -let is still productive (applet = small app; even Aplet =
| candied apple is only documented a century back); only takes
| ordinary nouns.
|
| -ling feels still productive, but new archetypes are rare so
| it's mostly used with preexisting words.
|
| -ole and variants might be productive in science but are
| otherwise not even recognized.
|
| -poo is apparently productive but not something I ever reach
| for
|
| -ses I'm not convinced is actually correctly analyzed; it
| appears to just be a redundant plural, similar to how
| "bestest" is a redundant superlative
|
| -sies is actually just -s (diminutive/filler) + -ie/-y
| (diminutive) + -s (plural). Usually the first -s is required
| for a word that ends with a vowel (but also after n
| (including nd/nt with the d/t weakened), m, ng, r, l, p, or
| b; the need for disambiguation is also relevant)
|
| But -y/-ie remains by far the dominant diminutive. It
| shouldn't be confused with several other uses of the suffix
| though (such as with the meaning of -ish).
|
| Influence from Romance languages is strong enough that
| foreign diminutives are now more common than some of the
| traditional English diminutives.
| t-3 wrote:
| > But -y/-ie remains by far the dominant diminutive. It
| shouldn't be confused with several other uses of the suffix
| though (such as with the meaning of -ish).
|
| I think the -y meaning of ish is very closely related to if
| not identical to the diminutive use.
| ouchjars wrote:
| -o is most characteristic of Australian English but English
| speakers over the world are familiar with "kiddo",
| "psycho", and now "doggo".
| mjd wrote:
| My own kiddo, at the age of two or three, decided that -o
| was a productive suffix and started calling me and her
| mother "Daddo" and "Mommo".
| o11c wrote:
| I don't think that's actually a diminutive (meaning
| shifts to add smallness or endearment), just a
| colloquializer (meaning doesn't change, just becomes less
| formal; dialects may adopt a particular informal word as
| standard).
| wink wrote:
| not sure psycho counts, as it works in every language
| that uses the greek? latin? base.
|
| Also I kinda liked learning about smoko, even as a non-
| smoker.
| secondcoming wrote:
| -een is there but probably more common in Ireland/Scotland
| than in other places.
| dvlsg wrote:
| One of my favorite jokes relies on this.
|
| Q: Where does a general keep his armies?
|
| A: In his sleevies!
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think the most common diminutive in English preceding the
| word with the word "little". This is not a suffix but is used
| in much the same ways as diminutive suffixes are used in
| other latin languages.
|
| "little bear" and "little johnny" would both be quite natural
| phrases.
| Jordan_Pelt wrote:
| The only example I can think of is "munchkin" which was
| apparently coined by Frank Baum for The Wizard of Oz.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Yes, but it's archaic
|
| Some places sell munchkins (little donuts)
|
| and we send our 4-5 yr old children to Kindergarden
|
| but we dont stick it to the end of words like inho/inha in
| portuguese or ito/ita in spanish
| triyambakam wrote:
| Kindergarten is not a diminutive but loan word from German.
| leereeves wrote:
| Kindergarden comes from German, where "kind" means child.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| No, -kin is not a suffix used anymore. English does have a
| diminutive suffix though, it's -y/-ie:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-y#Suffix_2
|
| For example, John -> Johnny, Tim -> Timmy, Grace -> Gracie, cat
| -> kitty, horse -> horsey. As far as I can think of, it can
| only applied to one-syllable nouns; longer words must be
| clipped first -- e.g. Katherine -> Kat(y|ey|ie), Tobias ->
| Toby, Andrew -> Andy, stomach -> tummy.
|
| I can't think of an augmentive suffix that can be applied to
| names.
| rendang wrote:
| -kin is not but via your link
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/-kins sometimes
| "-ikins"/"-ykins" is used, I've heard this before but can't
| think of any specific examples
| nemomarx wrote:
| I vaguely associate it with British writing, or at least an
| antiquated feeling. Reminds me of Widdershins.
| munificent wrote:
| I'd expect augmentives for names to be rare because they're
| often pejorative and the opposite of endearing. I have
| occasionally known people whose nickname is something like
| "Big Fred".
|
| In modern English, you could probably get away with a
| nickname like "Fredzilla".
| saghm wrote:
| I can't say I've ever heard "kin" used in everyday English
| speech. The only generally recognizable example word I can
| think of using it is "munchkin", which either refers to certain
| small residents of Oz (from "The Wizard of Oz" lore) or the
| name Dunkin' uses for the confection more generically known as
| a "doughnut hole" (which if you're not familiar with it is
| essentially the doughy center of the doughnut removed to make
| the hole and in my opinion should be called something like
| "inverse doughnut holes", although no one else seems to feel as
| strongly as me about it).
|
| I had to Google what "augmentative suffix" was; despite having
| taken several years of Spanish in middle school and high school
| and being aware of the concept, I somehow hadn't heard that
| term before! I don't think there's anything common for that in
| English; the only thing that springs to mind for me is the
| prefix "big-ass", which probably isn't different enough from
| the typical adjective used for this purpose to qualify.
| schnable wrote:
| We have prefixes like "mega" and "super."
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| See also: jumbo-, hyper-, micro-, nano-, mini-, uber-.
|
| I'm sure there are more but I haven't done enough crossword
| puzzles lately to be on top of my game.
| phito wrote:
| wouldn't micro-, nano-, mini- be diminutives?
| wlindley wrote:
| Also "napkin" (from nappe, old for "tablecloth"). See https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napkin#Etymology_and_terminolo...
| physicsguy wrote:
| Only one I can think of these days are when kids call their
| parents something liked 'Daddykins'. But obviously there are
| words where it's now part of the word in it's own right today
| like 'napkin' or 'catkin'
| leereeves wrote:
| I haven't seen -kin is used as a diminutive suffix in modern
| American English, in the way -ito,-ita is in Spanish (ninito,
| perrito). Maybe in England?
| stevesimmons wrote:
| > Is it still used in common English?
|
| pumpkin
|
| Though now I think about it, it's very odd diminutive. Pumpkins
| are large rather than small.
| munificent wrote:
| I don't think pumpkin gets is name from the "-kin"
| diminutive.
|
| Etymologyonline says: _1640s, "gourd-like fruit, of a deep
| orange-yellow color when ripe, of a coarse decumbent vine
| native to North America," an alteration of pompone, pumpion
| "melon, pumpkin" (1540s), from French pompon, from Latin
| peponem (nominative pepo) "melon," from Greek pepon "melon."_
|
| So the "n" has been on the end of the word for a long time.
| Aloisius wrote:
| OED says it was remodeled with the diminutive:
|
| _> Alteration of pumpion, variant of pompion n., with
| remodelling of the ending after words in -kin suffix._
| ianburrell wrote:
| Dictionary says that pumpkin came from French pompon (large
| melon) and was originally pumpion. English colonists named
| the orange melon they discovered in New World pumpkin.
|
| Maybe it was joke pronunciation, calling large melon small.
| It could be a term of endearment for favorite melon. It could
| be they wanted to distinguish between all large melons and
| this large melon. Or it could be pronunciation drifting from
| use.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| ... or were early New World squash just of the smaller
| variety and only recently have we selectively bred them
| once that Mendel fellow started messing around with his
| peas?
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Jack o' lanterns are large, but plenty of the older varieties
| are softball sized.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| > Is it used still in common English?
|
| Not at all, really only in words 'munchkin', 'napkin', or
| 'pumpkin'.
| DavidAdams wrote:
| A "bodkin," an archaic word for a small knife or sharp
| implement, is probably a diminutive of "bod" or dagger. A
| "jerkin" or a tight vest, might be a diminutive of the Dutch
| "jerk," (dress), but all of these words are so old it's hard to
| nail down their etymology. As other commenters pointed out,
| today's diminutive suffix is -y/-ey, used mostly for childhood
| nicknames and baby-talk names like horsey.
| CamouflagedKiwi wrote:
| I don't think there are many cases where it's used "correctly"
| but it does get constructed in some cases - e.g. in Harry
| Potter some of Ron's brothers call him "ickle Ronniekins",
| which is slightly nonsense but we recognise it immediately as a
| maximally diminutive form of his name.
|
| I can't think of an augmentative suffix, only prefixes (super-
| and things like that).
| quuxplusone wrote:
| We (via French, I guess) have a mildly productive suffix
| "-ette" or "-et", as in cigar-ette, kitchen-ette (floret,
| bassinet, owlet). It doesn't imply animateness the way "-kin"
| does; e.g. "hotelette" or "showerette" seem like plausible
| coinages in a way "hotelkin" and "showerkin" don't (but I
| sense some cross-pollination from Japanese "-kun" messing
| with my interpretation of the latter). But "-ette" certainly
| connotes femininity: "little Ronniekins" says he's a baby,
| but "little Ronnette" says he's a _girl._
| Symbiote wrote:
| -iekins makes sense to me as a nickname for an infant in
| Britain. Probably only spoken within the family.
| mturmon wrote:
| If you want to go looking, grep '[^s]kin$'
| /usr/share/dict/words
|
| turns up a lot. You have to guess at the candidates, like:
| pipkin -- a little earthenware pot firkin -- a small cask
| dodkin -- a coin of little value ciderkin -- watered-down
| cider
| decimalenough wrote:
| Don't forget the merkin -- pubic wig.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/merkin
| harperawl wrote:
| Another one of my favorites, grimalkin
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimalkin):
|
| grey + Maude + kin = grimalkin.
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| catkin
| ASUfool wrote:
| Bumpkin?
|
| "an awkward, simple, unsophisticated person from a rural area"
| (dictionary.com)
| mjw1007 wrote:
| "-let" is another one, which is sometimes used in non-childish
| contexts (eg in "tasklet" or "chiplet").
| throwaway519 wrote:
| It's suffiiently understood to be usable in th3 right context.
|
| Ling's another. Both diminuitive but slightly differently.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Not much, but it's an anglicisation of the German -chen, which
| very much is.
| niccl wrote:
| napkin is literally a small piece of napiery (cloth)
| nrclark wrote:
| > I didn't know English had a diminutive suffix (-kin). Is it
| used still in common English?
|
| No, at least not in the US. In American English, you'd use a
| modifier instead of a suffix. We have some pre-diminutized
| words like "oopsie", but no general-purpose suffix that you can
| attach to anything.
|
| There are some _prefixes_ that you can use though. You could
| prepend just about anything with "micro", and people will know
| you mean "a small version of X".
|
| > Also, is there an augmentative suffix as well that I don't
| know about?
|
| Also no (at least not that I can think of). Modifiers are also
| more common. You can also use prefixes like "Mega" as an
| augmentative. Depending on the word, this can be used for comic
| effect.
| mportela wrote:
| "-y" is a quite common diminutive suffix in English nowadays.
| As a fun fact, Americans find hilarious/cute how Brazilians
| pronounce English words ending in consonants (e.g.
| WhatsApp/Facebook) adding an extra "i/ee/y" sound because it
| sounds like adding "-inho" to them!
| AbuAssar wrote:
| In arabic we have (bin or ibn) which means son of, and (abu)
| which means father of.
| amiga386 wrote:
| Another one to add is that Japanese boys names often end _-ro_
| (-Lang , "nth son")... including the very plainly named Yi Lang
| (Ichiro, "first son"), Er Lang (Jiro, "second son"), San Lang
| (Saburo, "third son"), Si Lang (Shiro "fourth son"), Wu Lang
| (Goro, "fifth son"), Liu Lang (Rokuro, "sixth son"), Qi Lang
| (Shichiro "seventh son"), Ba Lang (Hachiro, "eighth son") and
| Jiu Lang (Kuro, "ninth son")
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Iron Maiden: Shichiro no Shichiro
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| I believe some Ancient Roman names are also like this:
|
| Male: Sextus, Septimus, Octavius, Nonus.
|
| Female: Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, Quinta, Sexta, Octavia,
| Nona, and Decima
|
| But on further investigation the males seem to actually be
| named after months
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zshd6h/when_...
|
| and the women are unclear
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praenomen
| ralgozino wrote:
| That's pretty convenient and easy to remember
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Is Shiro a taboo name? Seen an ad for a big corp not printing 4
| out of deference to the Japanese, since its the word for death.
|
| Or do people associate it with white?
| amiga386 wrote:
| I'm not sure. 4 and death just _sound_ the same, it 's more a
| superstition to avoid saying those numbers, like Westerners
| thinking 13 is unlucky. It doesn't extend to all words
| beginning with or containing "shi"
|
| Also, shiro (Cheng castle or Bai white) is not the same as
| the name Shiro (e.g. Si Lang "fourth son", Zhi Lang
| "determined son"?, Shi Lang "historical son"?)
| kr2 wrote:
| In Farsi / Persian we have "-zadeh" which means child of (born
| from). Last names were not instituted in Persia / Iran until
| early 1900s and everyone got to pick their own, so there are a
| lot of *zadehs as it was an easy choice. So eg Hassanzadeh is
| child of Hassan
| aitchnyu wrote:
| In the New Testament, the governor actually asks the crowd "do
| you want a pardon for Yeshua or Yeshua Bar Abbas", Bar Abbas
| meaning son of Abbas, a common naming convention. The text
| officially goes "do you want a pardon for Jesus or Barabbas?"
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Harris and Harrison are other examples of this kind of surname.
|
| In Dublin, the bus routes are bilingual and a couple of years ago
| I noticed that the Irish translation of Harristown is Baile
| Anrai1. When I first saw "Baile Anrai" as the destination for a
| passing bus, I wondered where Henry's Town might be. I then
| figured that Henry and Harris must be variations of the same name
| and that Anrai is the Irish version of both names.
|
| Sure enough, when I check this now, Wikipedia concurs2. The
| article it cites states that Harry is the _"Medieval English form
| of Henry. In modern times it is used as a diminutive of both
| Henry and names beginning with Har."_ 3
|
| The surname Hanks may also derive from the use of Hank as a
| diminutive of Henry4
|
| 1 https://www.dublinbus.ie/getmedia/947fdcee-5f28-46e0-8785-ab...
|
| 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_(given_name)
|
| 3 https://www.behindthename.com/name/harry
|
| 4 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hank#Proper_noun
| codetrotter wrote:
| Henry the Potter. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it heh.
| mjd wrote:
| Except that Harry isn't a nickname nobody has any more.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| If you read the article instead of just the headline, you
| will find that almost all the names discussed are names
| people _do_ still have. Jack, Dick, Bob, Nick, Bill, Robin,
| etc. are nicknames specifically called out in the article.
|
| The article does finish with Hob, Daw, Wat, and Gib. But most
| of the names highlighted are ones that are still in use. (I
| personally also have found that a lot of people don't realize
| Harry is a nickname for Henry, like anyone who wasn't alive
| for JFK doesn't know "Jack" is "John")
| jsnell wrote:
| The HN guidelines specifically ask you not to claim that
| somebody did not read the article:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| But if you're going to do it, the one time it's really
| misplaced is when you're claiming the author of the article
| didn't read it.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| To be fair, I missed the double negative in "isn't a
| nickname nobody has any more" too until I saw this
| comment and looked closer.
| xp84 wrote:
| This is the best possible comment (besides perhaps the
| author replying that "Yes, I did read it after I wrote
| it")
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| It's actually even more relevant here than it appears, in
| that the rest of the comment is true: half the article
| really is about nicknames that people do still use, so
| there was no reason for the author to object. But that
| point is lost thanks to the snark.
| mjd wrote:
| The first part of the article explains the pattern, where
| a nickname becomes a patronymic surname, using familiar
| examples.
|
| This sets up the main point, which is that the pattern
| holds so reliably that when you meet a patronymic surname
| you can often infer the existence of a nickname, even
| when it's one you don't recongize.
|
| Hence the title.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > a lot of people don't realize Harry is a nickname
|
| Does no one know Shakespeare any more? I
| see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining
| upon the start. The game's afoot: Follow your spirit,
| and upon this charge Cry 'God for Harry, England, and
| Saint George!'
| Anthony-G wrote:
| I had actually read Henry IV, Part 1 in school many
| decades ago but in that play the young prince Henry was
| (mostly) called _Hal_ - not to be confused with his
| opponent, Henry Percy, better known as Harry Hotspur.
|
| Off-topic: I wonder if this the first recorded use of the
| phrase "the game's afoot"?
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| _Familiar in his mouth as household words Harry the king,
| Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and
| Gloucester, Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd._
| stevetron wrote:
| Another example for Harry: nickname for Harcourt. Used in 2
| episodes of the original Star Trek series for Harry Mudd
| (Harcourt Fenton Mudd).
| humanfromearth9 wrote:
| Harry also for Harold!?
| kragen wrote:
| You seem to be criticizing someone for not having read an
| article he wrote himself. Not only is this general class of
| complaint specifically forbidden by the site policy here,
| it represents a sort of combination of incompetence and
| malice that I find extremely distasteful. I doubt I am
| alone in this.
| m463 wrote:
| double negative unwinding...
| Anthony-G wrote:
| I was thinking along the lines that these days "Harry" is
| (mostly1) a stand-alone name and no longer used as a nickname
| for Henry (and this was something I only realised in the past
| couple of years).
|
| Anyhow, I really enjoyed the article and learning about the
| origins of surnames, e.g., I didn't know that "Peters" should
| be understood to be in the genitive case and I'd never have
| associated the surname Dixon with being "Richard's son" -
| even though I'm familiar with Dick as a nickname for Richard.
|
| 1 Other commentators have pointed out that Prince Harry was
| actually christened as Henry.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I would tend to assume that "Harry" was short for "Harold",
| not that it was a standalone name.
| timc3 wrote:
| Well I know someone that has that as a nickname.
| Xophmeister wrote:
| Prince Harry's real name is Henry.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| Isn't Harry short for Harold?
| Digit-Al wrote:
| I've now checked, and it was originally a form of Henry, but
| can now also be a diminutive form of any name beginning with
| Har... So we're both right : - )
| caseyohara wrote:
| Here's another interesting connection: the Italian forename
| Enzo is a derivative of the German name Heinz, which is a
| diminutive of Heinrich and cognate of the given name Henry.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I always thought that it was a nickname for Lorenzo or
| Vincenzo
| asymmetric wrote:
| Both hypotheses seem plausible:
| https://www.behindthename.com/name/enzo
| tibbar wrote:
| A few more I haven't seen mentioned yet:
|
| * "Dob" is another old nickname for "Robert", giving us "Dobson";
|
| * "Dodge" another nickname for Roger, hence Dodgson, as in Louis
| Carrol's real name, Charles Dodgson;
|
| * "Tibb" is an old nickname for Theobald, giving surnames like
| "Tibbs" and "Tibbets";
|
| * "Hud" for "Hugh", giving us the Hudsons.
| mjd wrote:
| Thanks, I'm going to add these to the article. I'll credit you
| as "Hacker News user `tibbar`" unless you'd prefer something
| else.
| tibbar wrote:
| Nope, that sounds great!
| froddd wrote:
| What about a surname like 'Collinson' -- if 'Collins' is
| issued from this process already, would this be another layer
| of it?
| fullstop wrote:
| You should look into Russian naming conventions. It wouldn't
| surprise me if some of those rules bled over into western
| names as well.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Simpson (from Simon) is an interesting one. Most of the consonant
| adjustments are for simplification (e.g., Robkins -> Robins, and
| Adkins -> Atkins) but expanding Sim to Simp seems like an outlier
| in this sense because Simson doesn't seem particularly difficult
| to say. I believe dropping the /p/ is common, even, depending on
| the dialect.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Simpson eh? I'll remember that name.
| Affric wrote:
| Without the p most English speakers would turn the s into a z
| because the m is voiced.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| My last name - Beattie - is also in the "Bartholomew" nickname
| group along with Bates/Bateson.
|
| Bartholomew means "son of Ptolemy", so the name is sort of
| "Ptolemy's son Bart's kid".
|
| (Fun fact: Just to drive the Brits crazy, many families in the
| U.S with that surname (including mine) pronounce it "bee-AT-tee"
| instead of "bee-tee". God knows why. Maybe it's an attempt to get
| people to spell it correctly.)
| fragmede wrote:
| The other pronunciation that drives the Brits crazy is that
| Bucket is pronounced Boo-Kay.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Huh... I had figured "Bartholomew" meant "son of" something,
| but I had no idea what Tholomew could possibly be.
| raldi wrote:
| Don't forget Niklaus or Nicholson.
| teleforce wrote:
| When I was in school in England the most common first names for
| boys are exactly the first names that were given in the article
| namely John, Peter, James and Williams. The first three are from
| the Bible names and the last one is not from the Bible but from
| the name of Williams the Conquerer or Guillaume in French. The
| other most popular ones are Andrew, Philip, Matthew and Thomas.
| Fun facts, most of English people have middle names but it always
| abbreviated (e.g John F. Peterson) and apparently it's considered
| very rude to call someone by their middle name.
|
| Later I've found that the typical English popular first names are
| mostly from the Bible, or to be exact the disciples of Jesus. In
| the Quran however, the names of Jesus disciples are not given but
| just called as Hawariyyun or the helpers/disciples. Similarly the
| names for friends or sahabat of Muhammad are not provided in the
| Quran. The ones that went to established the Rashidun Caliphates
| are very popular among Muslim for examples Omar/Umar, Osman/Usman
| and Ali. These three names are equivalent to the top three given
| in the article namely John, Peter and James.
| physicsguy wrote:
| It's funny picking a year on FreeBMD and seeing what names were
| popular then. At the moment old fashioned names are really
| popular - I met a little toddler called Margot last week! But I
| have to think that names like Sylvia, Lisa, Karen, Sharon, etc.
| might take quite a few generations before they come back into
| fashion.
|
| In the Victorian era names were pretty creative and different!
| Lots of ones that haven't come through as 'classics'. My great
| grandmother's name was Rosina for e.g.
| teleforce wrote:
| >names like Sylvia, Lisa, Karen, Sharon, etc. might take
| quite a few generations before they come back into fashion.
|
| Sylvia, Lisa, Karen, Sharon might make a comeback but not
| Karen due to the recent negative connotation and has been
| considered to be a pejorative term [1].
|
| Similarly most of the Jesus disciples names become common
| place, the name Judas is avoided like a plague, since it's
| considered to be a pejorative term equivalent to traitor
| based on what he did to Jesus.
|
| [1] Karen (slang):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)
| physicsguy wrote:
| I'm familiar with the pejorative but I reckon that'll die
| out, plus it's more an American thing that hasn't had that
| much crossover here in the UK.
| kgeist wrote:
| There're also cases when a nickname stems from the full name
| which no one has anymore.
|
| In Kievan Rus, the common form of Vladimir was Volodimir. Ukraine
| still has this form (Volodymyr Zelensky).
|
| The diminutive of Volodimir was Vova, which makes sense. Later,
| in Russia, Volodimir was replaced with the Church Slavonic form,
| Vladimir.
|
| So today diminutive of Vladimir is Vova (not Vlad, a common
| mistake in the West to call Putin Vlad).
| romanhn wrote:
| Oh that's interesting. Explains the other common diminutive of
| Vladimir - Volodya. And yeah, Vlad is short for Vladislav.
|
| My favorite set of Russian diminutives that makes zero logical
| sense to a non-native is: Alexander (formal) = Sasha (informal)
| = Shura/Shurik (very informal).
| kgeist wrote:
| Alexander => Alexasha => Sasha
|
| And then with suffix -urik: Sashurik => Shurik
| MrVitaliy wrote:
| The surnames with the suffix -enko are the most known and common
| Ukrainian surnames. Where "en" is roughly son-of or a child-of
| equivalent in English, and the "ko" means a smaller, baby
| version. For example Kovalenko where "Koval" means blacksmith,
| Petrenko where Petre or Petro if from a biblical name Peter.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| Embarrassing how little of this I knew, especially with my
| username.
| ryanbigg wrote:
| I wonder if Fitzgibbon fits this pattern? Fitz being "the bastard
| son of..." and Gibbon, like ape? Or perhaps Gibbon has another
| meaning?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| https://www.behindthename.com/name/gibbon/submitted diminutive
| of Gilbert.
|
| My guess is its just like Robin:
|
| Rob + kin -> Robkin -> Robin
|
| Gib + kin -> Gibkin -> Gibbon
| floxy wrote:
| How about Madison? Son of Madi...?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Maddy was a nickname for Maude (before becoming a nickname for
| "Madison" itself) but that would make it a rare since it'd be
| from the mother's side. Random internet sources claim it's more
| likely to be a variation of "Matthew's Son" but none seemed
| particularly certain.
| bilekas wrote:
| I've always been fascinated by how people of generations have
| gotten their names, it's usually a good story if you can trace it
| back enough..
|
| I always found it uncomfortable how in the US (more so than other
| places) you could just change your name with a fee and a piece of
| paper. That said a lot of my family who emigrated had their names
| changed in the immigration office while moving to America, at the
| same time that has become an extension of ours..
|
| If my nickname was a surname, we probably wouldn't be allowed a
| passport
| ttyprintk wrote:
| There's a flip side: in Europe many centuries ago it was best
| for Jewish people to change their/our names to evade cultural
| prejudice. Europe and Napoleon in particular mandated
| unambiguously Jewish names.
|
| The privilege to change our name was liberating.
| larusso wrote:
| Reminds me of a great translation I struggled a bit at first.
| Gimli from Lord of the Rings is named in English: Gimli, son of
| Gloin. In the German translation his name is Gimli Gloinssohn. So
| back to English it would be Gimli Gloinson
| ttepasse wrote:
| By the way, there are two German translations. One "original"
| by Margaret Carroux which is closer to the English original and
| who collaborated with Tolkien back in his days, and a newer one
| from the late 90s by Wolfgang Krebe which tried to transform
| the text to something closer to spoken German. In the original
| Sam calls Frodo "Master" or, I believe sometime "Sir", which is
| to be understood in the gentry commoner relationship. There is
| no real equivalent to "Master/Sir" in German. Carroux used
| "Herr" which sounds rather archaic to post-medieval Germans;
| Krege uses "Chef" which sounds too modern for the text.
|
| If I remember my childhood's Carroux translation correctly she
| used "Gimli, Gloins Sohn", so not the Scandinavian
| construction, but a grammatically correct, but still archaic
| sounding, German construction which is near the original and
| still got the vibe of Gloinson.
|
| Translation is tricky business.
| matsemann wrote:
| Yesterday I watched a Harry Potter movie with my GF. I was a
| huge Potter-head back in the days, she haven't read the
| books. So I tried to explain to her the huge discussions
| around the acronym RAB in the books, and how the Norwegian
| translator had guessed on RAS to match how other character
| names were translated. Led me down to this article which has
| a whole section on "difficulties in translation" https://en.m
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harry_Potter_transla...
|
| So how the mirror of Erised had do get a proper backwards
| name in Norwegian, the O.W.Ls needed a fun acronym as well,
| Tom Marvolo Riddle is translated as Tom Dredolo Venster to
| make a matching sentence akin to how it in English is I am
| Lord Voldemort. Gotta make the songs and poems rhyme, etc.
|
| The Norwegian translation is a work of love, and the
| translator Torstein Bugge Hoverstad got quite famous here for
| his work.
| quercusa wrote:
| I have to imagine that Tolkien would have been delighted to
| discuss how to translate LoTR.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Some books I have read have left terms untranslated
| (typically rendered in italics) where the concept doesn't
| really translate. That might work quite well for master/sir.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Speaking of nicknames, "nickname" was "an eke name" (an
| additional name) so people thought it was "a nickname", similar
| to how "a napron" became "an apron". That is, it's one of the
| words that was "a n-" but the n moved because it sounds like "an
| -"
| chuckadams wrote:
| "Orange" got the same treatment, coming from "naranj"
| drivers99 wrote:
| I almost put that, but I was reading the entry for that in
| etymonline and it didn't fit what I was saying exactly. i.e.
| it wasn't "a norange" at any point in English (or was it?),
| but the process happened in another language that we borrowed
| "orange" from, and it would have been too much of a tangent
| to get into that:
|
| > Loss of initial n- probably is due to confusion with the
| definite article (as in _une narange_ , _una narancia_ ), but
| also perhaps was by influence of French _or_ "gold."
| https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=orange
| nashashmi wrote:
| Another "son" that comes in is when put in a prefix. McDonald is
| son of Donald (i think this is Irish). In semitic languages, the
| prefix added is Ben like Benjamin means Son of Jamin. In italian,
| they add O'Donald (i think) for "of Donald".
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| The R->H nicknames are interesting considering the northern
| French "r" sounds like the aspirated "h" in English. Many French
| would pronounce Robert as approximately "ho-beh(r)". I wonder if
| this is a place where idiosyncratic spelling captured differences
| in pronunciation of the name, but the common given name never
| changed its spelling.
| m1n1 wrote:
| Some cultures had (have?) a tradition of naming each successive
| generation according to the next line in a poem or song.
|
| If you ran out of verses, you'd pick a new song to start over.
| wenderen wrote:
| Lawrence => Law => Lawson
| fanf2 wrote:
| Oh yes, also => Lar => Larkin, Larkins
| 725686 wrote:
| So Rich Hickey is Richard Richard.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| In a similar vein: the origin of nicknames Junior, Chip, Trip,
| and Skip:
|
| When the father and the son carry the same first name, the son
| can be nicknamed Junior (this is commonly known). But he can also
| be said to be "a chip off the old block" or "Chip" for short.
| When the grandfather, father, and son all have the same first
| name, then the grandson is the third (or triple) of the same name
| - ergo "Trip".
|
| What about Skip? When the grandfather and the son have the same
| name, but the father is the odd one out. The grandson is now
| "Skip" with the name having "skipped" a generation before making
| a return.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| I'm not so sure about Chip. Trace and Trey are like Trip. For a
| while, I've been looking for uses of Buster where equivalent to
| Junior.
| nailer wrote:
| > We get Hodge / Hodges / Hodgson / Hodgkins from "Hodge", an
| arcahic nickname for Roger.
|
| I wonder if the Brazil Rogers - which are pronounced Hodger - are
| related to this older version of the name.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Can someone explain patronymic names to me as someone from a
| different culture? So you name your son with your given name +
| son, right?
|
| But doesn't it mean he no longer shared the same surname with
| you? How does it make sense?
|
| (Edit: I'm aware it was a practice long time ago, but still.)
| thristian wrote:
| Icelandic names follow that pattern. Bjork's full name is
| "Bjork Gudmundsdottir" because she is the daughter of Gudmundur
| Gunnarsson.
|
| English-speaking countries generally don't do that. For a long
| time people had only first-names, and disambiguated with
| nicknames or patronymic names where necessary. Eventually as
| society got larger and more complicated, governments started
| legally requiring people to have surnames, and they more or
| less stuck. If you meet a John Williamson today, his father
| probably isn't called William, but he's probably descended from
| a William who lived in the late medieval/early modern era.
| dghughes wrote:
| Baxter is the female version of Baker i.e. a female baker (person
| who bakes for a living).
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobkin
|
| IRC, one of the Strugatskys used this REnicked name on his
| brother
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| This was so cool to read. I often think in English names are
| black boxes that doesn't have deeper meaning (unlike Chinese
| where names often have literal meaning), so the insight here was
| great. And in hindsight mostly obvious, but I had never thought
| of them that way before. Nice find!
| jMyles wrote:
| How about Jenkins?
|
| Is it "Son of Jen", or some totally different formulation?
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Wikipedia has "Jenkins" as "son of John".
| bjarneh wrote:
| The guy has his blog going since 94. What a legend!
| timc3 wrote:
| It has been written that the s suffix was also used by people
| that had a "master" and they would adopt their masters surname,
| trade or first name with the suffix. For example the worked for
| the Smith, they would become Smiths.
|
| Trouble is I can't remember where I read it, but I also recall at
| least two people that were heavily into genealogy telling me the
| same. It might have been
|
| https://www.routledge.com/A-History-of-British-Surnames/Mcki...
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Look up occupational surnames, and the related possessive s.
| Roberts implies some servant of Robert, with Vickers being a
| mix.
|
| The actors in mystery plays are interesting to me. They'd play
| the same character their entire career. So King, Lord, and
| Virgin are _roles_ according to Wikipedia:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname#Occupational_surnames
| hoseja wrote:
| Wow that's a lot of patronymics I wasn't aware are patronymics.
| Way more sneaky than the scandinavian -sons.
| serverlessmom wrote:
| Here's an exception to these general rules (first names appearing
| in surnames) is Peterman: you'd think it was some kind of
| relation to a relative named peter, but it is actually a name for
| a profession. A Peterman was someone tasked with finding deposits
| of saltpeter for the production of fertlizer and gunpower.
|
| A partial documentation is on Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltpetre_works
|
| A better narrative of this industry is in Ed Conway's book
| "Material World" https://edconway.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-
| material-worl...
| queuebert wrote:
| "Then in the distance, I heard the bulls. I began running as
| fast as I could. Fortunately, I was wearing my Italian Cap Toe
| Oxfords." - J. Peterman
| culi wrote:
| Both 'peter' as in the name and peter as in "saltpeter" likely
| have the same etymological origins meaning something like
| "rock" or "stone".
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Interesting, never occurred to me so many English names are
| constructed in this way. In Ireland we have O' (e.g. O'Brien)
| that means 'descendent of' and Mac/Mc that means 'son of'. Also
| the female equivalents Nic and Ni (less common).
| prismatix wrote:
| Another interesting one: Dawson is David's son.
|
| I have a friend whose son is named Dawson and the father is
| David. When naming my own kid, I was curious of the origin of
| Dawson and finally put two and two together. Apparently it was
| intentional!
| krunck wrote:
| What about Mason and Jason?
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