75 new of 80 responses total.
Thanks Colleen, we were both responding at the same time. There does not seem to be a good solution to this problem. Maybe they should choose another name for someone who will be living in both countries. I will tell them it is likely to be mispronounced. How about Mayhan? That does snot look Chinese. Her brother was almost named Miaohan, but I pointed out that he might get teased for a name that sounded like a cat.
Well I for one thought it as "May-han", although I can see people mispronouncing it. I know for fact, it is a major drag having a name people can't spell or pronounce. My first name, Trisha, is constantly mispelled or mistaken for Teresa or Tracy. My last name, Patton, is always mispronounced as "Payton". And it's always misspelled. You'd think it would be easy wouldn't you?
I seriously doubt there are any names that will never be mispronounced, misspelled, or made fun of. I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it.
My last name is always mispelled. People keep forgetting the silent q's and v's
I wouldn't worry about it. Most names are would be pronounced differently in different languages. Spell the name the way you want, and pronounce it the way you wish. As you know, "ghoti" is prnounced "fish". Featherstonehaugh is pronounced "fanshaw" (in England). I give my name Curl, and people write down Kurl, Kerl, and worse. My first name is Rane....and I have variously gone by "ran-ee", "rene'" and "rain", at different stages in my life. There are no RULES for people's names.
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I read it as 'May-han.' Why not suggest May-Han?
Well, at least none of you are named Twila. :-) That can get pretty fun, though at least there's only one major mispronunciation likely (Tweela, long eee rather than Twiila long iii) and my birth last name, Oxley, was always good for a few mispronunciations. I am so glad I'm a PRice now.
Is that pronounced "pree-chay"?
no, that would be pree-kay...
"Mei" is too popular of a Chinese name for girls -- it means "beautiful." It's all over the place. I think the Chinese purposely leave it as "Mei" rather than change it to "May" is so that the name is distinctly Chinese. That is the cool thing with Chinese names, however -- because of the Chinese language, every Chinese name has a literal meaning. Very rarely true with English names.
"Mei" also reminds me of words like "meijer's"... I like the "Maehan" suggestion...
re: resp:16 Thats only partly true, Jemmie. English names do have meaning, but mostly the names we use were not originally English, and so the meaning aren't evident as they are in Chinese. And most of the names have been in use so long that the name and the word have often diverged dramatically. (I love names and have spent long hours learning the meanings and origens of names, both given and familial. It's a hobby.) ;)
How does one pronounced Rane (if not like rain)? Thanks for all the suggestions. I will pass them all along. Now I know why so many Chinese names start with Mei. For some reason, I had not thought of the pronounciation of Meijer (must be because I live closer to Kroger's), even though my roommate's last name, Deigert, is pronounced with that vowel. That could definitely be a problem. Anyway, the parents will have to find something that satisfies them. I will let you all know what they choose. My last name in Japanese comes out Keesan-san.
re 16: Actually, many western names have literal meaning. Mary = 'bitter' (probably comes from myrrh (sp?)) Philip = 'lover of horses' Ethel = 'regal' or 'noble' Cynthia = 'of the moon' Celeste = 'of the stars' or 'of the heavens' Arnold = 'manly' William = 'will, helm' (helmet) That's just for starters.
Re #19: my parents named me "ranee", spelled Rane. I was a ranee until I went to high school, when I converted to rene' (ra'nay). It wasn't until I was 26 that I adopted "rain". (I knew a girl once that called me Bernie.) Come to think of it, it really is about time I tried something new.....
While we are waiting for the news from Meihan (?) 's parents, I am curious about naming customs in other countries. Meihan's mother, like all (most?) other Chinese women, did not change her family name upon marriage. The family name comes before the given name. Her family name is spelling Xiang, her husband's is Zhao, the son's Zhao. I will ask them which name the daughter gets. In Swedish daughters and sons get family names like Gunnarsson and Gunnarsdatter (son and daughter), in the Slavic languages family names have different endings for male and female (Novak but Novakova). In Russian the middle name is a patronymic, formed from the father's name plus an ending. In Macedonian a woman's middle name before marriage is her father's given name, but after marriage it is her husband's given name, in other words a woman keeps her given name and adds her husband's whole name (minus his middle name). What at the customs in South America, Africa, elsewhere in Asia? Come to think of it, what are the new customs here? If children with hyphenated names (one from each parent) get married to someone else with a hyphenated name, what name do they use? Where both parents keep their own family names, are the children always given the father's family name? Judging from the situation in my college reunion publication, things are still chaotic. Any ideas?
naming conventions in the US are currently in a chaotic state of change, depending more upon the whim of the individual or couuple than any established standard. i know of one couple who both had the same last name when they met, and when they married, they both chose a completely new surname to share.
I like it to be entirely up to the whim of the individuals, and would not like the imposition of a new national naming convention. This is one situation where whim is better than order. After all, we do all get a social security number.... 8^}. The example other gives of a couple choosing a new surname is marvelous. Why not? There are other ways of keeping records of genetic relationships, which only the medical profession really need be concerned about.
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.
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.
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.
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'?)
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.
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.
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....
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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(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.")
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")
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.
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.
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).
Jan, which dialect of German do you speak? I thought only British English and east-coast US left off the r's.
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?
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?
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.
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?
any ideas about the meaning of the lithuanian name menkewicz?
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.
#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.
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.
so would mengele be a name meaning torturer, as well as being synonymous?
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?
Item Winter 1997 agora 50 has been linked to Language 91.
Re 38: keesan, "Matthew" is the English form of the Greek form of an old Jewish name. More or less.
Is there a new Yiddish version of Matthew that sounds like Matys?
In America, there's the added problem of figuring out whether some names have been changed at Ellis Island or not. My mother's family is fairly certain that theirs was, since in Lebanon nobody seems to have heard of a Machraz surname. But that's what they have.
Mahraz, Mahrez? Americans do not pronounce the h in this position.
In response to #52. Our grandson is named Matthew in English. WEhen we had him "named" in a Hebrew Ceremony, the Rabbi gave us the name "Matenayu" as his Hebrew name. I don't know if that's the only Hebrew equivalent of Matthew, but its the one he suggested for us. So we took it. And we like it.
That's the american spelling. depending on whom you talk to, we pronounce it either MACK-riz or MACK-RAZ. We have no clue what it's from.
i do know of someone who has the last name menke, which was shortened from menkewicz. and while it looks polish, the people whose name i'm asking about arrived here from lithuania.
The sound written cz here, and pronounced like English ch in church, would be written c with a little v on top of it in Lithuanian. The cz spelling makes it a Polish name. There are probably at least as many Poles in Lithuania as there are in Ann Arbor, considering political boundaries have changed a lot over the centuries. Hungarian also uses cz. My grandfather arrived here from Poland with a German-spelled last name (Rothenburg), because the Polish Jews had moved east from Germany, and my other grandfather came from Latvia with a name that might also be German. (The Jews in Germany were assigned last names in medieval times.) Nemetz is the German spelling of the Czech name Nemec, which is the word for German, and means 'non-speaker' (or dumb, in the original meaning). I found also Nemith and Nemith, which I am guessing might be Hungarian but don't know. Anyway, there has always been lots of migration in central and eastern Europe. Menkewicz might have been a German name adapted to Polish. Names are often left in the spellings of their original languages and then they have their pronunciation botched. It is not just an American phenomenon.
i don't think there *is* any new yiddish. it is a dying language.
It used to be that half of babies (in the sixties?) were named Jennifer, Jessica, Joshua, Jonathan, Jeremy, Genevieve, Jocelyn, Jacob, etc. Then there was a spate of Laura, Lara, Laurie, Lori, Lura, and Kirstin, Kerstin, Kristin. What are babies being named nowadays? Are there similar faddish or popular names in other countries?
I know that I know a lot of Lauras and a lot of liz's.
my favorite female name is Nancy. Favorite male name is Paul or Mike.
If you really want to know what the "trendy" or popular names are, pick up a fairly recent (in the last year or two) baby name book. We've got one that has popular names in a bunch of countries worldwide (who really needs to know the #1 name in Italy?). We did, however, settle on Jacob Martin (if it's a boy) and Kimberly Diane (if it's a girl). So, those are our favorites of the month. <grin> All this *IS* subject to change as the pregnancy continues...
Could the popularity of the name Diane be related to the princess? Where do
you think popular names originate? I know Michelle had something to do with
the Beatles song, and people used to be named after favorite movie stars, but
what is the origin nowadays? I notice a lot of revival type names around like
Sarah and Amanda and Anna. Are they still popular this year? My great aunt
was named Sarah, possibly for Sarah Bernhardt, in the previous century (or
was Sarah Bernhardt popular after 1885, when my aunt was born?).
Does anyone have a really unpronounceable (in English) name? A Polish friend
just wrote me of a Polish comedy movie in which a captured Polish soldier,
when asked his name, pronounces it Grzegorz Brzeczyszchykiewicz, and enjoys
the confusion. (sz = sh, cz = cz, rz = zh, y = i as in hi, ie = ye, w = v).
Even a Pole would have trouble with this one, which he was reminded of when
we were trading tongue twisters.
I thought all babies sexes were now known before birth? How old does the
fetus have to be before the sex can be determined?
Whoops, even I spelled it wrong. Brzeczyszczykiewicz. (The first e has a diacritic under it and is pronounced en).
They can be, but not everybody chooses to find out.
Actually, we chose Diane because we liked it. I hadn't thought about Diana at all. Dang. Back to the drawing board...
I have a friend named Deena, which may be Hebrew, close enough? My mother's best friend in high school was Dinny, from Diane. Dana, Donna, Dinah?
Nothing wrong with Diane. There are people named Diane.
What i'd like to know, why, when foriegn names are translated into the english alphabet, aren't they spelled phonetically instead of throwing in so many extra letters?
Well, many foreign languages use the same characeter-set as english, but with different meanings for some characters - like 'ch', which sounds like 'k' in some languages, 'sh' in others, etc.
There are often sounds that English does not even have. It's the same problem putting names into many other languages. Japanese has a special alphabet for spelling foreign names. Czech takes over German names spelled with the German letters u and o with an umlaut (two dots) over them. I am curious how French and Chinese and other languages handle the problem.
In addition to what orinoco & keesan said (both correct, not complaining), for many languages there's a history behind transliteration into English, & sometimes the pronunciation of the other language has actually changed. I've been told that this was part of the reason for the major changes in transliteration of Chinese names a couple of decades or so ago - "Peking" became "Beijing", "Mao Tse Tung" became "Mao Zedong", etc. (OK, I'm probably hashing the current forms. Sorry.) This kind of thing is, after all, the reason for a lot of silent letters in *English* words - the "k" in "knife" or "knight" was once pronounced, for example. An example of what keesan mentioned: I've been told that the silent "g" in the word "gnu" represents a glottal stop in an African language from which we got that word. No corresponding English sound - to pronounce the "g" as we would reading "phonetically" being no closer to the original than is leaving the sound out entirely.
What i mean is we could make the pronunciation so much easier
for our standards.
My maiden name was "Delaney", which is Irish and means that my family originated on the Slaney River and was "dark" or "black". My married name is "Tucker", which has something to do with the making of cloth, though I don't remember what. (There's also, apparently, a german form of "Tucker", but I have no idea whatb that means.)
Tucker - one who tucks, or a piece of lace or cloth in the neckline of a dress. Tuckpoint - to finish mortar joints between bricks or stones. A tucker may have been a mason's assistant. The baby's name will be spelled Zhao Jinghan, where han means morning (she was born in the morning, like most of us) and jing means water (born near Lake Michigan, in Chicago. The parents, after hearing all the possible pronunciations suggested by grexers, decided to choose a name with an unambiguous pronunciation. So grexers have actually determined a baby's name!
Nope, it's not a mason's assistant -- at least in the books I researched in Tucker had something to do with weaving and dying cloth. It was a specific job, but I don't remember which one.
Lots of people were involved in weaving, which was big-money industry in the middle ages, espeically England. Weaver/Webber/Webster and Fuller are common names. Dyer. Spinner and Spindler (?). Could the Whites have been bleachers? Let us know about Tucker.
Well, it seems esiest to type it as Mayhan, but it seems more lingustically correct to spellit as Maehan. Anyway, have a nice day...
You must not have read this whole item. Her name is now Jinghan, her parents decided to give her something easy to spell and pronounce.
You have several choices: