7 ms·

Absolutely off-topic, but I need to get it out of myself: I just noticed Joel Spolsky's surname means "from Poland" ("z Polski")

jvanderbot 4y ago
I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names when speaking to hurried immigrant families. My last name is pretty close to "Von Der Hook" by pronunciation, which is awful close to "from the hook" (Hoek, a part of Netherlands). My friend is quite close to "From the Sluis", which is another part of Netherlands. Add to that the various spellings "Vander X, Van Der X, VanderX". I'm sure the conversation went "Surname?" "Vas?" "Where you from?" "Von Der Hook" scribbles something on intake card. "Next!"
- asveikau 4y ago
  Not doubting your story, but wanted to add that many European Jewish communities especially wound up with surnames that reference geography. That would have happened centuries before the US existed, representing migrations that happened in Europe. Don't have a lot of details on this history (which i heard orally) but a Google search for "Jewish surnames geography" seems to back me up.
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    Yeah this very much might be how surnames actually happened. I wouldn't know. Or, a little of column A and column B.
  - Animats 4y ago
    China still struggles with that. A traditional question is "what is your village?", to get name uniqueness in a system which has too few family names. France at one time went to the other extreme - names had to be approved by a central registry at birth. Until 1993, there was an official list of allowed first names. Today, there are still some prohibited names. "Nutella" just made the list.
    - tomcam 4y ago
      > “Nutella” just made the list My wife is French. We’re expecting our third child and the other two, Banana and Oatmeal, were devastated.
      - shagie 4y ago
        In #dadjokes on one of the slack channels I'm in... > On the way home I'd pick up Pizza and Coke. She wasn't happy with me. > Fur fgvyy unfa'g sbetvira zr sbe anzvat gur xvqf. https://rot13.com https://rot13.com
    - lloeki 4y ago
      A clarification: it's not so much that there's a list of prohibited names, it's more like some people had "clever" ideas and the legal naming process has a judge involved to validate that names are not outrageous or could cause harm to a child. Once it's been ruled out, it's unlikely to have a different result on a second occurence. Examples (from the process above: keep in mind people actually tried) Titeuf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titeuf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titeuf Fraise: (strawberry) because of the expression "ramène ta faise" ("bring you ass over here") Jihad: for obvious reasons Joyeux: (happy) from the dwarf name Patriste: (notsad) an attempt to circumvent the above Babord / Tribord: (port / starboard) someone tried that for twins MJ: trying to honour of Mickael Jackson's death Griezmann Mbappé: you can guess Mégane: because the family name was Renaud (close to Renault, which has a car named Mégane) Mohamed: because the family name was Merah (Mohamed Merah being a well-known serial murderer) Fañch: a traditional Brittany name, initially rejected because the ~ diacritic, which does not exist in the French alphabet. Was later overruled and allowed. The horrible part, though, is about all those terrible names that are not rejected as the ones above were but are obviously a sort of sad, tasteless joke and very very bad for the child.
- bitwize 4y ago
  My sister's ex-husband's family tacked a "-ski" onto their surname while immigrating to avoid sounding too German. They immigrated during one of the World Wars (I believe it was the second) when anti-German sentiment was high.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    If they're from Silesia, it might actually be a mixed German/Polish family that used both family names historically depending on the context; it was not uncommon there.
- cookie_monsta 4y ago
  I'm surprised there aren't more people around with the surname Vas
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I don't know anything about refugees immigrating into the US so I can't refute your story in any way, but one thing worthy of note is that Dutch names often include geographical areas with "van de/van der/van" (meaning "of, from") as an insertion ("tussenvoegsel") between first and last name . "van der Sluis" would be a perfectly normal Dutch name. I also wouldn't think twice about "van der Hoek" if I heard someone introduce themselves by that name. Many people had to pick surnames when the French occupied the Netherlands, often leading to geographical names, references to occupations, or sometimes even jokes ("Naaktgeboren" being relatively common, meaning "born naked"). The forefathers of someone named "van der Sluis" could have lived near a sluice/lock, lived near a place called Sluis, or perhaps operated sluices/locks as part of their job in the barging industry. English speaking countries where last names consisting of multiple words were incredibly rare often concatenate(d) such names into one or fewer words. To many English speakers the only name with multiple words would imply nobility (if they even considered the concept at all) and I wouldn't expect nobility to arrive amidst refugees either. To this day some American websites refuse to take the space in my last name. As an added bonus, Dutch names specifically can have "tussenvoegsels" that are part of the name but need to be treated specially to be used correctly (i.e. when sorting a list of names). Depending on if the name belongs to a Belgian or a Dutchman the capitalisation rules also differ (the Flemish capitalising the "Van", the Dutch using lowercase letters). Of course other languages and cultures also have their own naming schemes with grammar rules (take German/Austrian "von" or Danish "af/de/von" for example); it's hardly a unique concept, but the details differ between countries. It's no wonder those poor American immigration workers couldn't make heads or tails out of the names these people brought into their country. As a Dutchman, the end result is often quite interesting to witness when Americans or Canadians with Dutch names appear on TV, most names containing their own special deviation from "normal" Dutch names.
  - Tijdreiziger 4y ago
    > Depending on if the name belongs to a Belgian or a Dutchman the capitalisation rules also differ (the Flemish capitalising the "Van", the Dutch using lowercase letters). Actually, a little-known grammar rule (in the Netherlands) is that lowercase is only used for a tussenvoegsel following a first name. In other cases, the first tussenvoegsel is capitalized. Example: Piet van der Sluis -> meneer Van der Sluis https://onzetaal.nl/taalloket/hoofdletters-in-aanhef-brief-of-mail https://onzetaal.nl/taalloket/hoofdletters-in-aanhef-brief-o...
- bazoom42 4y ago
  > I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names when speaking to hurried immigrant families This is a myth.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    C'mon, you can't just drop that in with no corroborating data. I could, with similar authority, state that it being a myth is a myth.
    - roywiggins 4y ago
      "Someone wanting to book passage to America, Canada, Australia, South America, etc., would have had no difficulty locating an agent. Agents quoted ticket prices to the would-be traveler, accepted payment, and then recorded each traveler’s name and other identifying information (the specific information collected varied over the years). The information taken down by the agents was sent to the home office, where it was transferred by shipping company clerks onto large blank sheets provided by the US government. Those sheets became the passenger lists which later were used by American port officials." https://journals.ala.org/index.php/dttp/article/view/6655/8939 https://journals.ala.org/index.php/dttp/article/view/6655/89...
    - bazoom42 4y ago
      Don’t take it on my authority. Read any historical source about what happened at Ellis Island, eg. https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/ellis-island-facts-and-myths https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/ellis-island-facts-and-... Even wikipedia has it under the “Name-change myth” section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island > Records show that immigration officials often actually corrected mistakes in immigrants' names, since inspectors knew three languages on average and each worker was usually assigned to process immigrants who spoke the same languages. > Many immigrant families Americanized their surnames afterward, either immediately following the immigration process or gradually after assimilating into American culture. Because the average family changed their surname five years after immigration, the Naturalization Act of 1906 required documentation of name changes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  No doubt this kind of thing happened, but people also just changed their names over time because it's easier. One of my grandfather's brother migrated to Canada in the 50s, and he now goes by "Vanderloo" or "Vanderlo" (not entirely sure how he spells it) instead of "Van der Loo". Same people Dutch people named Martijn or Maarten, who will often use Martin abroad. Johan Cruijff is typically known as Cruyff abroad, etc.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  >I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names no, ship's manifests (prepared at the point of departure) have been a standard in the ocean-voyage game for a long long time, and those were the lists used by immigration, not handwritten lists based on what they heard. see here https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-isla...
- bazoom42 4y ago
  > I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names when speaking to hurried immigrant families. This is not true. The Ellis Island workers recieved the names in written form from the ships passenger lists. But many immigrants changed their names after arriving in the US for convenience or to better integrate in society.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
asveikau 4y ago
I wonder if Yiddish speaking ancestors pronounced that S as SH because P follows it, which would not be in keeping with its Slavic root.
- asveikau 4y ago
  Now that Mr. Spolsky himself cleared up the etymology, I wish i could delete this. But he cited something with the letter ш, indicating the sh sound. So I think I was onto something.
spolsky 4y ago
A common assumption, but it is actually from Шпола, a city in the Ukraine.
- Jorengarenar 4y ago
  Really? I assumed it's the same genesis as the word "spruce" ("z Prus")
  - switch007 4y ago
    In case you missed it, that is Spolsky himself replying to you
    - Jorengarenar 4y ago
      Indeed I did miss that, but fortunately my reply wouldn't have changed. Now I kinda hope for further details. Is the surname from adjective "Шполянський"?
- fsckboy 4y ago
  seems reasonable to hypothesize that the Ukranian town might have named "from Poland"
  - worewood 4y ago
    Disclaimer: I'm a complete noob about the history of the region and the languages involved. I just figured out the best way to get an answer on the web is to post a wrong one first, so I went 5 minutes into the subject on Wikipedia and what I've concluded is that maybe it's actually the other way around. Poland is like "Land of Polans" which were the original tribe of the region. The Ш letter seems it is a prefix that comes from Hebrew, so maybe, Шпола also refers to Polans in some way. I must emphasize again that this can be completely wrong.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      The name "polans" derives from the word "pole", which simply means "field". There were actually several different groups of Slavs who were known as "polans", all named because of where they settled. One of them did indeed found Poland. But there were also (different) polans in what is now Ukraine - indeed, they were the dominant group, as Kyiv was their city. In any case, "pol" in the placename can simply refer to a field directly. Or even to something else; in case of Shpola, the local legend is that it was named after the guy who first settled there.
rr808 4y ago
https://forward.com/culture/13721/how-did-jews-choose-their-last-names-02146/ https://forward.com/culture/13721/how-did-jews-choose-their-... describes reasons how and why Jewish people chose names in Europe when Joseph II enforced them. https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/important-judaica-n09687/lot.149.html https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/importa...

jvanderbot 4y ago

I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names when speaking to hurried immigrant families. My last name is pretty close to "Von Der Hook" by pronunciation, which is awful close to "from the hook" (Hoek, a part of Netherlands). My friend is quite close to "From the Sluis", which is another part of Netherlands. Add to that the various spellings "Vander X, Van Der X, VanderX". I'm sure the conversation went "Surname?" "Vas?" "Where you from?" "Von Der Hook" scribbles something on intake card. "Next!"

asveikau 4y ago
Not doubting your story, but wanted to add that many European Jewish communities especially wound up with surnames that reference geography. That would have happened centuries before the US existed, representing migrations that happened in Europe. Don't have a lot of details on this history (which i heard orally) but a Google search for "Jewish surnames geography" seems to back me up.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  Yeah this very much might be how surnames actually happened. I wouldn't know. Or, a little of column A and column B.
- Animats 4y ago
  China still struggles with that. A traditional question is "what is your village?", to get name uniqueness in a system which has too few family names. France at one time went to the other extreme - names had to be approved by a central registry at birth. Until 1993, there was an official list of allowed first names. Today, there are still some prohibited names. "Nutella" just made the list.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    > “Nutella” just made the list My wife is French. We’re expecting our third child and the other two, Banana and Oatmeal, were devastated.
    - shagie 4y ago
      In #dadjokes on one of the slack channels I'm in... > On the way home I'd pick up Pizza and Coke. She wasn't happy with me. > Fur fgvyy unfa'g sbetvira zr sbe anzvat gur xvqf. https://rot13.com https://rot13.com
  - lloeki 4y ago
    A clarification: it's not so much that there's a list of prohibited names, it's more like some people had "clever" ideas and the legal naming process has a judge involved to validate that names are not outrageous or could cause harm to a child. Once it's been ruled out, it's unlikely to have a different result on a second occurence. Examples (from the process above: keep in mind people actually tried) Titeuf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titeuf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titeuf Fraise: (strawberry) because of the expression "ramène ta faise" ("bring you ass over here") Jihad: for obvious reasons Joyeux: (happy) from the dwarf name Patriste: (notsad) an attempt to circumvent the above Babord / Tribord: (port / starboard) someone tried that for twins MJ: trying to honour of Mickael Jackson's death Griezmann Mbappé: you can guess Mégane: because the family name was Renaud (close to Renault, which has a car named Mégane) Mohamed: because the family name was Merah (Mohamed Merah being a well-known serial murderer) Fañch: a traditional Brittany name, initially rejected because the ~ diacritic, which does not exist in the French alphabet. Was later overruled and allowed. The horrible part, though, is about all those terrible names that are not rejected as the ones above were but are obviously a sort of sad, tasteless joke and very very bad for the child.
bitwize 4y ago
My sister's ex-husband's family tacked a "-ski" onto their surname while immigrating to avoid sounding too German. They immigrated during one of the World Wars (I believe it was the second) when anti-German sentiment was high.
- int_19h 4y ago
  If they're from Silesia, it might actually be a mixed German/Polish family that used both family names historically depending on the context; it was not uncommon there.
cookie_monsta 4y ago
I'm surprised there aren't more people around with the surname Vas
jeroenhd 4y ago
I don't know anything about refugees immigrating into the US so I can't refute your story in any way, but one thing worthy of note is that Dutch names often include geographical areas with "van de/van der/van" (meaning "of, from") as an insertion ("tussenvoegsel") between first and last name . "van der Sluis" would be a perfectly normal Dutch name. I also wouldn't think twice about "van der Hoek" if I heard someone introduce themselves by that name. Many people had to pick surnames when the French occupied the Netherlands, often leading to geographical names, references to occupations, or sometimes even jokes ("Naaktgeboren" being relatively common, meaning "born naked"). The forefathers of someone named "van der Sluis" could have lived near a sluice/lock, lived near a place called Sluis, or perhaps operated sluices/locks as part of their job in the barging industry. English speaking countries where last names consisting of multiple words were incredibly rare often concatenate(d) such names into one or fewer words. To many English speakers the only name with multiple words would imply nobility (if they even considered the concept at all) and I wouldn't expect nobility to arrive amidst refugees either. To this day some American websites refuse to take the space in my last name. As an added bonus, Dutch names specifically can have "tussenvoegsels" that are part of the name but need to be treated specially to be used correctly (i.e. when sorting a list of names). Depending on if the name belongs to a Belgian or a Dutchman the capitalisation rules also differ (the Flemish capitalising the "Van", the Dutch using lowercase letters). Of course other languages and cultures also have their own naming schemes with grammar rules (take German/Austrian "von" or Danish "af/de/von" for example); it's hardly a unique concept, but the details differ between countries. It's no wonder those poor American immigration workers couldn't make heads or tails out of the names these people brought into their country. As a Dutchman, the end result is often quite interesting to witness when Americans or Canadians with Dutch names appear on TV, most names containing their own special deviation from "normal" Dutch names.
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  > Depending on if the name belongs to a Belgian or a Dutchman the capitalisation rules also differ (the Flemish capitalising the "Van", the Dutch using lowercase letters). Actually, a little-known grammar rule (in the Netherlands) is that lowercase is only used for a tussenvoegsel following a first name. In other cases, the first tussenvoegsel is capitalized. Example: Piet van der Sluis -> meneer Van der Sluis https://onzetaal.nl/taalloket/hoofdletters-in-aanhef-brief-of-mail https://onzetaal.nl/taalloket/hoofdletters-in-aanhef-brief-o...
bazoom42 4y ago
> I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names when speaking to hurried immigrant families This is a myth.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  C'mon, you can't just drop that in with no corroborating data. I could, with similar authority, state that it being a myth is a myth.
  - roywiggins 4y ago
    "Someone wanting to book passage to America, Canada, Australia, South America, etc., would have had no difficulty locating an agent. Agents quoted ticket prices to the would-be traveler, accepted payment, and then recorded each traveler’s name and other identifying information (the specific information collected varied over the years). The information taken down by the agents was sent to the home office, where it was transferred by shipping company clerks onto large blank sheets provided by the US government. Those sheets became the passenger lists which later were used by American port officials." https://journals.ala.org/index.php/dttp/article/view/6655/8939 https://journals.ala.org/index.php/dttp/article/view/6655/89...
  - bazoom42 4y ago
    Don’t take it on my authority. Read any historical source about what happened at Ellis Island, eg. https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/ellis-island-facts-and-myths https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/ellis-island-facts-and-... Even wikipedia has it under the “Name-change myth” section: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island > Records show that immigration officials often actually corrected mistakes in immigrants' names, since inspectors knew three languages on average and each worker was usually assigned to process immigrants who spoke the same languages. > Many immigrant families Americanized their surnames afterward, either immediately following the immigration process or gradually after assimilating into American culture. Because the average family changed their surname five years after immigration, the Naturalization Act of 1906 required documentation of name changes.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Beltalowda 4y ago
No doubt this kind of thing happened, but people also just changed their names over time because it's easier. One of my grandfather's brother migrated to Canada in the 50s, and he now goes by "Vanderloo" or "Vanderlo" (not entirely sure how he spells it) instead of "Van der Loo". Same people Dutch people named Martijn or Maarten, who will often use Martin abroad. Johan Cruijff is typically known as Cruyff abroad, etc.
fsckboy 4y ago
>I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names no, ship's manifests (prepared at the point of departure) have been a standard in the ocean-voyage game for a long long time, and those were the lists used by immigration, not handwritten lists based on what they heard. see here https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-isla...
bazoom42 4y ago
> I think the workers on Ellis Island often made up last names when speaking to hurried immigrant families. This is not true. The Ellis Island workers recieved the names in written form from the ships passenger lists. But many immigrants changed their names after arriving in the US for convenience or to better integrate in society.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

asveikau 4y ago

I wonder if Yiddish speaking ancestors pronounced that S as SH because P follows it, which would not be in keeping with its Slavic root.

asveikau 4y ago
Now that Mr. Spolsky himself cleared up the etymology, I wish i could delete this. But he cited something with the letter ш, indicating the sh sound. So I think I was onto something.

spolsky 4y ago

A common assumption, but it is actually from Шпола, a city in the Ukraine.

Jorengarenar 4y ago
Really? I assumed it's the same genesis as the word "spruce" ("z Prus")
- switch007 4y ago
  In case you missed it, that is Spolsky himself replying to you
  - Jorengarenar 4y ago
    Indeed I did miss that, but fortunately my reply wouldn't have changed. Now I kinda hope for further details. Is the surname from adjective "Шполянський"?
fsckboy 4y ago
seems reasonable to hypothesize that the Ukranian town might have named "from Poland"
- worewood 4y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm a complete noob about the history of the region and the languages involved. I just figured out the best way to get an answer on the web is to post a wrong one first, so I went 5 minutes into the subject on Wikipedia and what I've concluded is that maybe it's actually the other way around. Poland is like "Land of Polans" which were the original tribe of the region. The Ш letter seems it is a prefix that comes from Hebrew, so maybe, Шпола also refers to Polans in some way. I must emphasize again that this can be completely wrong.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    The name "polans" derives from the word "pole", which simply means "field". There were actually several different groups of Slavs who were known as "polans", all named because of where they settled. One of them did indeed found Poland. But there were also (different) polans in what is now Ukraine - indeed, they were the dominant group, as Kyiv was their city. In any case, "pol" in the placename can simply refer to a field directly. Or even to something else; in case of Shpola, the local legend is that it was named after the guy who first settled there.

rr808 4y ago

https://forward.com/culture/13721/how-did-jews-choose-their-last-names-02146/ https://forward.com/culture/13721/how-did-jews-choose-their-... describes reasons how and why Jewish people chose names in Europe when Joseph II enforced them. https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/important-judaica-n09687/lot.149.html https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/importa...