=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= EDline Vol. 7, no. 6 (14 January 2002) Editorial mailing list (digest version) Published by the Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Contents: Q & A [2rb] Origins of surnames [Offshoot of [2ra] Stress patterns on names] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ---[2]-- Q & A -------------------------------------------------- ** [2rb] Origins of suurnames [Offshoot of [2ra] Stress patterns on names] Date: Tues, 11 Dec 2001 From: David Ibbetson, isserlis@rogers.com Judy Stein wrote: > Right, that's what I was addressing, the difference between the > American and British pronunciation or stress. My conjecture is > that you think of it as a first and last name (i.e., Robin is > one of Mr. Hood's sons), whereas we think of it as all one > name. No. This dates before hereditary surnames. IIRC Robin's father had a hereditary *title* which was most certainly not Hood. We don't know how Robin got that nick-name. It may be from a child-hood incident, it may be from a hood he wore in all weathers, so that he could be easily recognised by his followers, or because -- like Caesar -- he was bald. We don't know. We do know that his father wasn't Mr Hood. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 11 Dec 2001 From: Michael Lewis, mlewis@brandle.com.au After all, every surname was once descriptive -- whether of trade (Smith), lineage (Robertson), or appearance (Brown). ----------------------- Date: Tues, 11 Dec 2001 From: Geoff Palmer, gdp@lineone.net In my case, yes -- although my predecessors shared more of a vocation than a trade, perhaps. I'm curious: can anyone explain any of the following names in such terms? "Maliphant"/"Oliphant" may be of foreign origin, perhaps. Does "Hastie" derive from "hasty"? What about "Gee" or "Scaife" -- and what about the commonplace "Jones"? A comprehensive dictionary of surnames would be an interesting addition to my bookshelf. I remember talking to the economist John Eatwell about his surname. His assured me that it had nothing to do with a hearty appetite, but was derived from the French "d'Etoile"! ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Michael Lewis, mlewis@brandle.com.au Geoff, thanks -- you have implicitly highlighted two errors (over-simplifications, anyway) in my earlier posting. I should have written "every surname was once descriptive -- whether of trade (Smith), lineage (Robertson), appearance (Brown), or some other attribute", and I should have acknowledged that some surnames have crossed linguistic boundaries. Eatwell from the French is one example; Scaife from one of the Scandinavian tongues (at a guess) is another. My own surname, from the Welsh, is yet another. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Caroline Burns, carolinegburns@hotmail.com I have a vague recollection of a radio program concerning surnames in Germany. What I recall is that at some point, perhaps in the late 19th century?, some dictate led jewish families to adopt mineral/geologic wors as last names. Does anyone know more detail here? ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Anna Beth McCormack, mccormack@goulburn.net.au A book of surnames I've recently read says that origins of surnames can generally be grouped into four: - personal names (e.g. MacDonald, Hodgson, Pugh, Michaels) - place names (e.g. Longbottom, Boston, Darcy) - occupation or status names (e.g. Cartwright, Ibbetson, Fitzroy) - description (e.g. Rufus, Inglis, Young) Description is a much less important group than personal, place and occupation names. It may be difficult to guess at origin from modern names, given the abbreviations, misspellings and transitions (e.g. from person to place and back to person) that have occurred over time. For example, a certain Brown could be descriptive originally, or short for Brownley (place) or Brownfriar (occupation) or even an anglicisation of German Bruning (personal). ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Judy Stein, jstein@panix.com Where would "Stein" fit into these categories? In my case it was originally "Pierre," translated from French to German as my ancestors emigrated from France to Germany. But would it have been a place name? "Stone" sounds like an odd name for a place. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Geoff Palmer, gdp@lineone.net Perhaps there's a connection with Christianity: Peter, from the greek "petros", a stone, or "petra", a rock. Now go from "Peter" to "Pierre" and then translate all too literally into German, giving "Stein". Just a thought. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Anna Beth McCormack, mccormack@goulburn.net.au French Pierre is the same as English Peter, from the biblical Peter, from the Greek 'petros' meaning rock. ('Your name is Petros, and on this rock I will build my church.') So in your case, Stein would have a personal name origin. But in biblical Peter's case the 'Petros' would be like a surname based on description, as his Jewish name was Simeon. But suppose a person started with the surname Neuschwannstein (if I've spelt that correctly), found they had trouble fitting it on forms, and simplified it to Stein. Their Stein would have a place name origin. Why not call a place just 'rock' or 'stone'? I know a place in New South Wales called 'The Rock' and I bet there are many others round the world. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: David Ibbetson, isserlis@rogers.com An ancestor may have been a mason, or there may have been some long-forgotten joke where, for example, a stone was substituted for a loaf of bread. The ancestor may have helped found a church: "On this rock I will found my church". It may be from the common given name, with the usual ending lost at some stage. More vain guesses will cost time and money ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Judy Stein, jstein@panix.com Geoffrey Palmer wrote: > Perhaps there's a connection with Christianity: Peter, from the > greek "petros", a stone, or "petra", a rock. ... Could be. These ancestors were Huguenots, who fled France and settled in Germany after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (which had permitted Protestantism), so their religion must have been of considerable importance to them. But if so, don't we have to add a fifth category of name derivations, i.e., biblical? Or perhaps "Misc." would do it... On the other hand, your suggestion leaves the general question unanswered, since "Stein" is considerably more common among Jews, and it can't be from the Christian Peter in that context. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: David Ibbetson, isserlis@rogers.com In many countries surnames were imposed by authorities, i.e. by low-level civil servants. Immigrants and people who were "different" were often hard-hit as at Ellis Island. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Caroline Burns, carolinegburns@hotmail.com Do any of you suspect, as I do, that your Huguenot ancestors were Jewish? Or am I stirring too much up? That's what my mother says. PS: my Hugenot ancestors were known as Griners in the US (arriving there 1720 or so), after, we think, a town near Salzburg, Greinier (Sp.??) ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Judy Stein, jstein@panix.com Caroline Burns wrote: > Do any of you suspect, as I do, that your Huguenot ancestors > were Jewish? Or am I stirring too much up? Well, they were definitely Protestants at the time they fled France. I suppose they could have been converted Jews, although I should think my mother (who's heavily into genealogy) would have turned that up, and it's not something she would have been at all hesitant to mention if she had. I'd be tickled pink, personally. In the Northeast where I live (New York City), everyone has always assumed I'm Jewish because of my name (names, actually--Judith means "Jewish woman"), and I've always felt a bit uncomfortable that I didn't deserve the honor. Is Pierre (their name before they emigrated to Germany) a common name among French Jews, do you know? ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Caroline Burns, carolinegburns@hotmail.com Thanks for your reply, Judith. My mother is funny about it. Her mother, an Ohio native, married my grandfather and moved to South Georgia in the 1920s -- somehow, the fact that her father was Jewish was 'obscured' and so remains, to some extent, to this day. (Though like you, my sister and I were very pleased on discovering this when we were in college.) My grandfather's family were the early 18th c. Huguenot immigrants. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Judy Stein, jstein@panix.com Anna Beth McCormack wrote: > French Pierre is the same as English Peter, from the biblical > Peter, from the Greek 'petros' meaning rock. ('Your name is > Petros, and on this rock I will build my church.') So in your > case, Stein would have a personal name origin. But in biblical > Peter's case the 'Petros' would be like a surname based on > description, as his Jewish name was Simeon. Ah, OK, so a name taken from a biblical (or historical, or mythological) character would be considered personal in this categorization, regardless of what category the character's name was in. As I noted in another response, though, we're still left with the origin of the very common Jewish/German "Stein." They must be surnames based on description, as "Petros" is. I wasn't thinking of "rock" as a personal characteristic as opposed to the name of an object, but it makes sense. For that matter, the same might have been the case with my ancestors, for all I know. > Why not call a place just 'rock' or 'stone'? I know a place in > New South Wales called 'The Rock' and I bet there are many > others round the world. Well, perhaps, but there are a *lot* of Jewish/German Steins, and no prominent place or region in Germany I know of that has the name Stein. > From where did the ancestors of the Jewish/German Steins > emigrate, and what's the word for "rock" in that language? Could it have been Hebrew originally, translated from language to language as the Jews emigrated from place to place? ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Susan Roberts, susan.l.roberts@saic.com I read some trivia recently that said after WWII, the illiterate Jewish people that arrived at Ellis Island signed their names with an "O", rather than an "X. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Yoel Strimling, yoel@docustar.co.il Apropos of nothing, really, I found out what the origin of my surname, "Strimling", quite by accident. I was at someone's house for dinner, and there was an old Lithuanian woman there. When we were introduced, she remarked "Ah, strimlings! I remember eating them in my youth!". After I recovered from such a strange statement, I found out that "strimlings" are apparently little fish, similar to anchovies, that are fished from the Baltic Sea. It turns out that my ancestors were fishermen - but maybe they got the moniker because they smelled like fish? I hope not. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Judy Stein, jstein@panix.com Caroline Burns wrote: > Thanks for your reply, Judith. My mother is funny about it. > Her mother, an Ohio native, married my grandfather and moved > to South Georgia in the 1920s -- somehow, the fact that her > father was Jewish was 'obscured' and so remains, to some > extent, to this day. Interesting. My mother is also from Ohio, but I can't remember offhand where my father's people, the Steins, first settled--I think it may have been Pennsylvania, as I recall there was some connection to the Pennsylvania Dutch (who were Germans). > (Though like you, my sister and I were very pleased on > discovering this when we were in college.) My grandfather's > family were the early 18th c. Huguenot immigrants. I wonder what percentage of Huguenots were converted Jews. I don't know much about the Huguenots. I guess I had assumed they were all converts from Catholicism. Would Jewish converts have gone directly from Judaism to Protestantism, or would they have converted earlier to Catholicism and then later to Protestantism? Oops, this is an editorial forum, not a history forum...if anyone knows, perhaps it would be more appropriate to let me know off-list. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 From: Caroline Burns, carolinegburns@hotmail.com I would love to know more too -- all you historians out there! For me and my sister, the very traceable (sp?) elimination of my grandmother's jewishness made us wonder what else had been obscured. As I said, I was in college (and my sister in law school) when we realized that our greatgrandfather's middle name was Cohen rather than Charles (I found a clipping of his obituary at my grandmother's house). I suppose there were good reasons in the first decades of the 20th c. for those with jewish ancestry to try to 'pass' -- but it is troublesome to come to grips with, in large part because it does make you wonder about the professed identity of others of your people. Where Judy grew up in New York and was often thought to be Jewish, I grew up in Northern Virginia and was teased by my Jewish friends for being hopelessly protestant. Babs Q Davenport, they called me. ------------------------ Date: Thurs, 13 Dec 2001 From: Susannah Driver-Barstow, sdrvr@ulster.net This interesting thread re surnames prompts to ask if any of you who have read up on the subject have come across any mention of whether, when surnames were coming into use from their various sources, women took/were given their own or was it only men (and then women by marriage or birth, presumably). I'd appreciate any references. Thanks very much. ------------------------ Date: Thurs, 13 Dec 2001 From: From: Caroline Burns, carolinegburns@hotmail.com My very protestanty English husband points out that Protestant refuges from France and elsewhere might have had a warmer welcome than Jewish refuges. Tricky times, modernity. ----------------------- Date: Tues, 18 Dec 2001 From: John Day, aday2@vtown.com.au Caroline Burns wrote: > What I recall is that at some point, perhaps in the late 19th > century?, some dictate led jewish families to adopt mineral/ > geologic wors as last names. Does anyone know more detail here? Actually, Caroline, I believe that the change was a century or so earlier. My memory fails me as to what country, but wherever it was, an ordinance was proclaimed that all Jews had to change their names to those of flowers or gems, so as to be readily recognized in business dealings. I have a suspicion that it was Venice or Vienna, but The Merchant of Venice might be colouring my recollection somewhat. On the mis-spelling of names, there is a curious road name near here in the Adelaide Hills. How would you pronounce "OINNS ROAD"? (hint - it might be Welsh in origin) ---------------------- Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 From: Iwan Thomas, iwan@frame.org.uk Owain's (Oh wines) or Owen's (Oh whens) Road - given it may be Welsh? ---------------------- Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 From: John Day, aday2@vtown.com.au Yes, Iwan, I had forgotten that we have a Welshman here!! Many of the first European migrants arrived in Australia without written language skills. I can just see an almost illiterate clerk asking a Welsh lad how he spelled "Owen" and miswriting (or mis-writing) what he heard, so the poor boy and his descendants were forever after "Oinn". Such things are not un-heard-of (or unheardof) in this country. ---------------------- Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 From: Eddie Kent, edlineek@aol.com How about 'oh-ins' Some time ago I was introduced to Eden Fairbanks, son of Douglas Fairbanks Junior (though I later came to doubt this when DF Jnr died and no mention of a son appeared in his obituary). Eden told me his grandfather's name (which I have forgot) and that when he arrived in America most of the people he was with were changing their names to something 'golden'. Wanting to be different he looked around at the beautiful country he had found, and picked 'Fairbanks'. Ain't that romantic? ------------------------ Date: Thurs, 20 Dec 2001 From: Monica Crabtree-Reusser, Monica.Crabtree-Reusser@clev.frb.org A professor of German literature (who was Swiss) told me once that there was a time (I pictured 1700s) that German authorities decreed that Jewish folks, who by custom had no surname then, had to purchase one. Those who had the money said, according to my professor, "if I have to buy a name, I'm going to buy myself a pretty one," so they'd select things like "goldstein." The snotty bureaucrats selling names would assign ugly names to those unfortunate folks who could not afford something better. ------------------------ Date: Thurs, 20 Dec 2001 From: Peter Best, pbest@idl.net.au Bill Bryson (Made in America) claims that the reason so many Jewish immigrants were happy to change their names on arrival in the US was that their families had been forced to adopt "German" names "sixty or seventy years before" arrival and that many of these names were imposed by officials who used names which carried disparaging connotations - Geldwasser (urine), Wanzenknicker (louse-picker) or Eselkopf ( ass's head). He doesn't give a reference for his assertions despite the fact that the chapter contains references to thirty-eight sources for other bits of info. ---------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 From: Esther Shchory, odelias@bezeqint.net I doubt it would be Italy as Italian Jews were forced to take their town of residence as their surname. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= END OF EDline 7.6 EDline homepage: < http://www.electriceditors.net/edline/ > ** The views expressed in this mailing list are strictly those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the moderators or of the Electric Editors. ** Articles (c) 2001, 2002, by individual contributors Design (c) 1996--2002 Iain Brown Compilation (c) 2002, Iain Brown / The Electric Editors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=