4 ms·

Not doubting your story, but wanted to add that many European Jewish communities especially wound up with surnames that reference geography. That would have hap

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.

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.