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Grex > Language > #91: it's a girl - question on how to spell her name |  |
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keesan
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response 25 of 80:
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Jan 10 20:31 UTC 1998 |
For your information: price (with a little v over the c) means stories,
tales, fables, and rane means wounds in Serbo-Croato-Bosnian. The latter is
pronounced rah-nay, stress on the first syllable, in case you are looking fora
new pronunciation for the coming millenium.
When my brother, who never had a middle name just the initial M., got
married to someone whose last name started with M, he adopted it as his middle
name (no hyphens).
Price (fables) is pronounched pree-chay.
The word krlja, pronounced curl-yah, means tick (the insect), or
castor-oil plant.
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janc
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response 26 of 80:
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Jan 10 22:30 UTC 1998 |
Not only do a lot of people mispronounce my name, I think it is correct to
mispronounce my name on the first try. If you don't know my gender, "Jan"
as in "Janet" is certainly the best guess. If you do know my gender, "Yun"
is probably the formally correct pronounciation for most people. But unless
you are speaking German, I prefer the Americanized pronounciation of "Yon".
However, I have no cause to expect people to know that, so I'm not bothered
in the least when people don't mispronuce my name the same way I do.
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bruin
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response 27 of 80:
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Jan 11 01:19 UTC 1998 |
This brings up two of my co-workers at the _Ann Arbor News_ named Kelly, and
one of them was male and the other female.
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orinoco
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response 28 of 80:
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Jan 11 02:53 UTC 1998 |
My first guess for Jan's name was 'jan-as-in-janet', but I wouldn't have
guessed 'yun'.
(Do you pronounce the last name 'wolter' or 'volter'?)
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beeswing
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response 29 of 80:
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Jan 11 05:46 UTC 1998 |
I thought it as "yon".
I decided that if I ever have a girl, her name will be Aquinnah. I love that.
Supposedly it is a place at Martha's Vineyard. Never been there. It can always
be Quinn for short. I like the name Schuyler too. Oddly enough, Michael J.
Fox's twin girls are named Schuyler and Aquinnah. But that's not why I like the
names. If I have another girl she'll be named Aislinn. It's irish and means
"dream". I first heard it when I learned that the Edge (U2's guitarist) has a
wife named Aislinn.
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senna
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response 30 of 80:
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Jan 11 06:38 UTC 1998 |
I've always thought it to be "Yon." I'm sure dang can tell us all about
having his name mispronounced. When a teacher pronounces his brother's name
on the first try, it's major news.
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ivynymph
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response 31 of 80:
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Jan 11 15:23 UTC 1998 |
I've actually *avoided* saying Jan's name because I could never tell who was
taking it "right".
My name is *always* pronounced correctly, and I've never been asked by anyone
over the age of 8 to spell it (Amanda Hood). However, the person around whom
I am most in school has the following last name: Pobojewski. It's not a
particular challenge, but it still seems no one is willing to attempt to say
or spell it, and many who finally try come up w/ the most *creative* of
incorrect pronunciations....
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keesan
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response 32 of 80:
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Jan 11 18:45 UTC 1998 |
My roommate wants to point out that it is helpful to have a last name that
people do not know how to pronounce, because that way you know when someone
calls and mispronounces it that they don't know you and are probably trying
to sell something. Or if they use the full given name instead of the nickname
they got you off of a list. (My roommate's phone listing is J. Deigert, and
it is a sure tipoff that they are selling something when they call for Mrs.
Deegert). If you want to track where your junk mail came from, you can make
up a different given name each time you give your name out. We made up Sheila
Loth for She, the Lady of the House, which has taken on a life of its own,
changing to the spelling Shelia without our help. Sheila lives with Herman,
who is no longer getting any mail for some reason. (If you want to stop
getting any junk mail, call Nancy Stone at the Solid Waste Dept. and ask for
a list that I made up and which they send out to people who complain to the
post office).
Pobojewski is Polish - po-bo-yef-ski. Stress the e. Boj has something to
do with battle. A boyar (the old nobility) was someone whose ancestors had
won power by fighting. Does anyone have a last name with an interesting
meaning? Or Slavic last name that they would like to know the meaning of?
(I am still waiting to hear about Meihan.)
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valerie
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response 33 of 80:
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Jan 11 21:52 UTC 1998 |
This response has been erased.
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ivynymph
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response 34 of 80:
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Jan 11 22:17 UTC 1998 |
(Incidentally, I feel like adding this about last names:
My favorite solution to the problem of names when having kids or
being married is a creative combination of the respective last names.
Unfortunately, "Hood" really doesn't combine with things particularly
well... But, as another example.. for Jan and Valerie's names for kids
I'd think of such last names as "Matters.")
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ivynymph
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response 35 of 80:
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Jan 11 22:23 UTC 1998 |
QUESTION: Does anyone happen to know the meaning or possible origin of
"Wosczac(k?)" as a Polish name? (It's my older brother's first last
name, as from his biological father/my mother's first husband......
his full name is "Jeffrey Spencer Wosczack Hood" and his wife's is
"Lorenza <don't know how to spell middle name> Burrato-Hood")
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keesan
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response 36 of 80:
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Jan 11 23:36 UTC 1998 |
Woska in Polish means wax. Woszczek is ear wax. A woszczak was probably a
person who worked with wax, or a candle-maker, as in English Chandler, of
which the phone book lists 29. sz is pronounced sh, cz is ch (church) and
w is v. Voshchak, stressed on the first syllable, a as in father.
Polish does not generally have double consonants as in mattis. Perhaps this
came from something like Matthias? Polish equivalent might be Matias, and
the last name would be equivalent to Mathews (person whose father is Mathews,
as in John Mathews being John the son of Mathews). The phone book has all
sorts of variants of this one: Mate, Mates, Mateja, Matejak, Matelic
(?related), Matewicz
I forget just where I was in this, having received my first chat call.
Back to the phone book. I find both Mate and Mates and Matej and Matejak and
Matewicz and Matey and Mateja and Mathai (Matthew) and Mathay and Mathe and
Matheison, etc. My guess is that the Polish name was Matej (misspelled in
English as Matey and Mathe and Mathay) or perhaps some longer variant. I find
also Mathey, Matheys, Mathia, Mathiak, Mathias, Mathis, Mattes. Maybe the
Jewish name was spelled with an -s, as in one of the above, or the official
at the border just picked the closest equivalent English-sounding name.
Anyway, at some point in the distant past one of your ancestors may have been
named Mathew or Matej or the like. My best friend in high school had a last
name Bloom, shortened at the border from Bachmutsky, because they were
standing in line behind a Bloom. See page 276 and the beinning of 277 for
more names +(Universal phone book 1997-98), including Mattic, Matthies,
Mattice, Mattis, Mattison, Matts, Mattschek, Matwiejczyk, Matwiczhyk, Matzke.
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janc
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response 37 of 80:
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Jan 12 00:25 UTC 1998 |
I only pronounce my name correctly if I am speaking German. In that case it
is "Yun Ditma Voilta". In English I use "Yon Walter". I don't know how to
pronounce my middle name in English (it is spelled "Dithmar"). I never use
it, so it never got Americanized. No standards exist for other languages
either, though I suppose I could try "Jean Voltaire" if I spoke French.
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keesan
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response 38 of 80:
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Jan 12 00:28 UTC 1998 |
Come to think of it, Matthew does not sound like an old Jewish name. I would
guess the original was Mattes or Mattis (which are probably both the same
thing spelled differently, since Yiddish was written in the Hebrew alphabet
and I don't think spelled out the vowels). This would be 'son of Matte'.
Any experts on Yiddish?
Colleen McGee says that her name means
'young girl son of Gee' and that daughter of would be ni Gee, but this is not
used much except on some of the islands. (McGee is Scots-Irish, which is the
Scots who emigrated to Ireland during the clearances, when people were evicted
to make room for sheep during the Industrial Revolution).
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keesan
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response 39 of 80:
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Jan 12 00:31 UTC 1998 |
Jan, which dialect of German do you speak? I thought only British English
and east-coast US left off the r's.
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keesan
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response 40 of 80:
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Jan 12 00:47 UTC 1998 |
Should this item be linked to the language conference, where it probably
belonged in the first place? If so, who does this? The FW for this
conference (Katie Geddes, who has not read mail since Dec. 22) or the FW for
the language conference?
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cyklone
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response 41 of 80:
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Jan 12 00:57 UTC 1998 |
Re #34: Don't you think that would make things difficult if any of your family
should try to do genealogy work sometime in the distant future?
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keesan
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response 42 of 80:
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Jan 12 04:14 UTC 1998 |
Valerie, my Polish friend has never heard of Polish names with -tt- but
suggested Matys as a fairly common Polish (not necessarily Jewish) name, with
no meaning that he knows of. It would be pronounced like Mattis. Webster's
Seventh says Valerie means (probably) strong.
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senna
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response 43 of 80:
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Jan 12 06:11 UTC 1998 |
This has large appeal. It doens't need to be stricken from agora just because
it involves languages.
Did you know that there are at least four Steve Kings in the local area?
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void
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response 44 of 80:
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Jan 12 08:09 UTC 1998 |
any ideas about the meaning of the lithuanian name menkewicz?
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aruba
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response 45 of 80:
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Jan 12 08:37 UTC 1998 |
The person who would link this item to language would be the fair witness of
language, i.e. rcurl.
This is a really neat item, BTW.
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rogue
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response 46 of 80:
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Jan 12 15:13 UTC 1998 |
#20: Those are not literal meanings one can get from the name itself. That is
why I specifically included the word "literal" in my original message.
Chinese names, because of how the Chinese language works, have literal
meanings.
#22: The child takes the father's surname.
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keesan
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response 47 of 80:
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Jan 12 16:40 UTC 1998 |
Menkewicz looks Polish to me. Meka (which is pronounced menka) means torture,
torment, suffering, pain, hunger pangs, misery, tribulation or b) wayside
shrine (derived possibly from the Passion of Christ?) torment anguish agony
distress drudgery vexation annoyance nuisance. (Meka has a mark under the
e). I can't imagine how this would have turned into a name. -ew (ev) and
-ow (ov) are endings used to make last names from first names and have a
possessive meaning like English 's - as in John's Mike, or Mike Johns. Maybe
there was a first name Menk? Or a German name Menck (whatever that meant)
which was Slavicized, and then the owner's descendants moved to Lithuania?
I found Menke as a probably related name. Do any Germans have ideas?
I once read an interesting book, which I will try to find again at the public
library, on how people acquired last names. In England this happened in the
late middle ages, by about 1400, partly because it got to be the fashion for
everyone to be named John or Mary rather than the old Anglosaxon names like
Edgar or Edward, where you put your name together from two pieces that had
a meaning (such as strong wolf) and people all had different names. The Johns
could be distinguished in various ways: by their father's (or mother's) name
(Johnson), by physical characteristics (Little John - the phone book is full
of Littles and Talls), where they lived (Green - by the village green,
Townsend, Church, Bridge), where they worked (Castle, Mott, Manor), the
village or town they came from (Jesus of Nazareth or Jack London), and most
commonly their occupation. I suggest, as a way to reconstruct medieval
English life, we try to come up with as many names as possible based on
occupations and maybe also physical characteristics and where you lived, in
other words, last names with meanings. If people wanted, they could start
in the phone book at their own name and go 5-10 pages in each direction, but
few or no English names started with K (it was spelled C), Z (S) or V (F),
so pick the letter before or after.
Most occupational names were from a verb plus the suffix -er (or -ler,
yer, -ster). Ster was a female ending and gave rise to Brewster (Brewer),
Spinster (Spinner), Webster (Weaver), and a few others. Yer is used after
w in Sawyer and Lawyer. Other occupations were Priest, Judge, etc. The
majority of Kings did not rule but worked for the king. Look for people
involved with food procurement and preparation (Fowler, Carver - catch the
wild bird and cut it up at the table), housing (Carpenter, Mason), clothing
(Taylor/Tailor), transportation (Carter), crafts (Smith), servants (Sarver,
a server) and civil servants (Clark, clerk). And note the number of
occurrences of a name (with variants) in the phone book for some idea of how
many were involved in each occupation (lots of Taylors and Smiths and
Wagners). If a name looks like an occupation but you are not sure, I can look
it up (hopefully) - such as Adler, Becker, etc. (Many of the -er names are
German, but we can guess at those too). Should this be limited to English,
or any language (if you can supply the meaning)? Chaucer had what I think
is a French-derived name (Chaser, or Hunter), from the Normal conquest.
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other
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response 48 of 80:
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Jan 12 17:32 UTC 1998 |
so would mengele be a name meaning torturer, as well as being synonymous?
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keesan
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response 49 of 80:
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Jan 12 18:24 UTC 1998 |
No, the Slavic word is menk, not meng. Mengele looks like a diminutive
(German or Yiddish) of Menge. German Menge means: quantity, number, amount,
a great many, mass, multitude, crowd. The verb mengen means mix, mingle
(related), blend, admix, meddle with, interfere in.. I found Meng, Menge and
Mengel in the phone book. Could the original Mengele have been a meddler,
or a mingler? Or someone who blended things, such as dyes or spices?
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