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Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more
- avvt4avaw 2y agoAdam => Ad => Adkin/Atkin => Atkins/Atkinson
- oniony 2y agoI imagine many ~son names are Scandinavian imports. Scandinavian surnames, until quite recently, were formed from the (usually) paternal forename. Iceland still continues this tradition to this day, e.g. Björk Guðmundsdóttir (daughter of Guðmundur). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name
- JJMcJ 2y agoThe singer's name is Björk. Guðmundsdóttir just tells us her father's name. It's not a family name in the sense that e.g., Swift is for Taylor Swift. If she was Icelandic, it would be Taylor Scottsdóttir.
- simiones 2y agoDepends on how you define "family name". In the most pragmatic sense, as in "what should you put in the family name field in legal contexts", then "Guðmundsdóttir" is her family name E.g. her passport will have that value under "Surname". And if she found herself in Iceland, in any paper where Björk would write down "Guðmundsdóttir", Taylor Swift would write "Swift", not "Scottsdóttir".
- pavel_lishin 2y agoWe visited Iceland recently and asked a tour guide some questions about naming conventions; apparently that's fine for visitors, but to get Icelandic citizenship, you're apparently required to have an Icelandic name. (Granted, maybe there was a communication gap there; maybe it would only be required of any children we had there?)
- icepat 2y agoThis is an old law that was changed recently. It's no longer needed that you adopt an Icelandic name to obtain citizenship.
- arnarbi 2y agoYou used to be required to adopt an Icelandic forename - not surname. You still kept your original name (if you wanted) and it was up to you which one you used on practice. But as sibling comment says, that’s been dropped. For surnames, anyone (including Icelanders) is allowed to use a family name if they have a claim to one, which is defined as having a parent or a grandparent carrying that name as a surname. So foreigners with family names can pass those to their children if they like and skip the patronym.
- amiga386 2y agoOK, then if Taylor Swift were born in Iceland, she'd have been called Taylor Scottsdóttir, because that would be the naming tradition. And if she were a man, and her wife had children, they'd take the surname "Taylorsson" or "Taylorsdóttir". But more realisticly, if she married her current boyfriend and they moved to Iceland and followed the Icelandic tradition, their children would take the name Travisson or Travissdóttir However, if she moved to Iceland, at a time when they still used phone books, people would look in the phonebook under "T" for "Taylor", as they'd look under "B" for "Björk", as in Icelandic society the "surname" doesn't have the same importance, given it changes every generation and isn't passed on like it is in other societies.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoEven in Iceland, it's still used primarily in the same way that it's used everywhere else... disambiguation. Which "Taylor", which "Björk", since given names are reused so often there are typically are many Taylors and many Björks. That their phone book chooses to use a different name for sorting doesn't change this, and given the nature of the second name, it would hardly be more efficient to use one or the other.
- amiga386 2y agoTrue, and even then, there are currently 7 Björk Guðmundsdóttirs according to their online phonebook... as you might expect https://en.ja.is/?q=bj%C3%B6rk%20gu%C3%B0mundsd%C3%B3ttir&people_scope=true https://en.ja.is/?q=bj%C3%B6rk%20gu%C3%B0mundsd%C3%B3ttir&pe... Obviously, there are a lot more John Smiths...
- kridsdale3 2y agoAt least for those two women, disambiguation is not necessary. Checking Google.com autocomplete, Bjork is returned for the substring "bjo" and Swift is returned for the substring "t". Making her the eponymous global entity for that entire letter. Her father should renaming himself Scott Taylorsdad.
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- weinzierl 2y agoFamily Name has a common definition. It is a type of surname passed down through generations. So Taylor Swift has a family name, Björk has not. That is also why passports have a surname field but not a family name field. Not everyone has a surname but conventions to deal with this vary. Similarly, passports use the terminology given name because not everyone has been christened and not everyone has a first name - for example I don't.
- kgwgk 2y ago> not everyone has a first name - for example I don't. > E-Mail is first name at my domain.
- weinzierl 2y agoGood catch! Fixed it, thanks.
- kgwgk 2y agoOr you could have "fixed" the comment. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/first-name https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/first-na... the name that was given to you when you were born and that comes before your family name
- weinzierl 2y agoI have a set of multiple given names, each of them given by a godfather. In our tradition and law they are equal because treating one of them specially is insulting to the godfathers (which you caught me guilty of). If given name or surname comes first is regional. Where I come from (Bavaria) traditionally the surname comes first, so even by that metric I wouldn't have a first name. Source: Die Reihenfolge der Vornamen stellt keine Rangfolge dar. Nach höchstrichterlicher Rechtsprechung (BGH, Beschluss vom 15. April 1959 – IV ZB 286/58) steht es in Deutschland dem Namensträger frei, zwischen seinen standesamtlich eingetragenen Namen zu wählen. [..] Die in der Geburtsurkunde eingetragenen Vornamen dürfen von den Namensträgern im privaten Rechts- und Geschäftsverkehr nach Belieben genutzt werden und sind gleichberechtigt. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorname_(Deutschland) https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorname_(Deutschland)
- cyberax 2y agoNot really. It's a patronymic. Some Slavic countries also use them, in addition to family names. > E.g. her passport will have that value under "Surname". Icelandic passports don't have a separate field for "Surname": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_passport#/media/File:Icelandic_Passport_(2019)_-_Biodata_page.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_passport#/media/File...
- kgwgk 2y ago> Icelandic passports don't have a separate field for "Surname" I may be missing your point but there is a "Surname" field in that photo, just above "Given names".
- taejo 2y agoMoreover, in a later picture on the page you can see an example showing a -dóttir name in that field (I had wondered if perhaps it was only used for people who happened to have a "real" surname as opposed to a patronymic, e.g. foreign-born citizens) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_passport#/media/File%3AISLpassportdatapage.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_passport#/media/Fi...
- cyberax 2y agoFacepalm. I don't know how I missed that.
- msh 2y agoNot until recently as such. In Denmark it became illegal to form them from the fathers name in 1828.
- arrowsmith 2y agoWouldn't it be -sen, not -son, if it was Danish or Norwegian? And -sson (double S) if Swedish. I imagine the vast majority of -son Anglo surnames come directly from the English word "son", not from immigrants.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoA lot of names get transliterated and/or misspelled when people move around.
- plasticchris 2y agoSomeone with the last name Blank told me their family lore was that the (Ellis island era) immigration paperwork person just gave up.
- smt88 2y ago“Name changed by staff at Ellis Island” is a myth. Some people, including many Eastern Europeans, did change their own names to make their ethnicity less obvious or to shorten the name (Schwarzenegger => Schwarz, Stein => Stone, etc.)
- nemomarx 2y agoCertainly we could rule it out as a widespread normal practice, but transcription errors or spelling changes would happen, right? Especially from languages that have letters that don't exist in English.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoYeah, I can't imagine that a lot of Russian or Polish immigrants - who wouldn't have spoken English - would have had any idea how to consistently transliterate their last names. How do you transliterate Жижщенко? Anything with a ё in it? Or an ы, or й? Was there a policy on differentiating between "е" and "э"?
- asveikau 2y agoScandinavians were pretty active on the British isles in prior centuries. It's a pretty influential source of English language. "Scandinavian import" sounds very modern, like you're buying a Volvo. The import would probably be more like: Britain and Scandinavia having a common ancestral source.
- nkrisc 2y agoTrue, though there of course have been many different waves of Scandinavian migrants to the British Isles over the past ~2000 years or so. In an American context, many -son surnames likely are from modern Scandinavian migrants (within the past 200 years), particularly for anyone from the Great Lakes/Midwest regions. The site seems to have succumbed to HN traffic so I can't read it to see if it's specifically about surnames in the British Isles.
- troupo 2y agoAs is "Simme" for Simon and possibly many other "nicknames" in the article which are not nicknames but versions of the name used by family, close friends, or used when calling a child.
- decimalenough 2y agoObligatory: https://youtu.be/I-OOpZitfd0?feature=shared https://youtu.be/I-OOpZitfd0?feature=shared
- junto 2y agoLikewise there are several patronymic surnames from the Welsh “ap <father’s name> (son of) that have ended up as new surnames retained the “ap” in several cases, mainly in reduced form at the start of the surname, as in Upjohn (from ap John), Powell (from ap Hywel), Price (from ap Rhys), Pritchard (from ap Richard), and Bowen (from ab Owen).
- sorokod 2y agoOh nice! Does Upton follows the same pattern?
- nielsbot 2y agohttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Upton https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Upton wiktionary says it’s from “up” + “town”
- motes 2y agowhat's up town?
- wccrawford 2y agoNothing much, town. What's up with you?
- plasticchris 2y agohttps://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/136933/difference-between-uptown-downtown-and-midtown https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/136933/difference-be...
- bell-cot 2y agoWorth noting - "uptown" can also mean or imply a part of town that is upstream and/or upwind of most of the municipality. Centuries ago - when towns were full of domestic animals, and raw sewage just ran into the local waterways - living upstream & upwind were major perks of being well-to-do. Plausibly the ur-example of this usage is London, England.
- shreddit 2y agoI just heard about “Dick” being a nickname for “Richard” but as a non native English speaker i can not see the reason behind that…
- duped 2y agoDick rhymes with Rick short for Richard
- downrightmike 2y agoAnd dick used to be short for detective, and used by private investigators like Dick Tracy. Then there is the implied Dick pun, like "Magnum" PI, where Magnum is a "Big Dick"
- nielsbot 2y agoWiktionary says this sense is shortened from “detective”, not related to the name FWIW https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dick https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dick (see English etymology #2)
- dylan604 2y agoWasn't a detective written as dic without the k? Clearly, the k was going to be used because everyone's inner 12 year old
- madcaptenor 2y agoAlso "dic" just doesn't look like an English word - compare kick, lick, sick, tick, etc. There are English words ending in -ic but they tend to be longer, Latinate ones.
- ASUfool 2y agoEpic mic drop there.
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- nkurz 2y agoI had a friend who's last name was Hodgeson. Until this article I'd never really considered that that it meant "son of Hodge". "Hodge" turns out to be a medieval English nickname for "Roger": https://nameberry.com/b/boy-baby-name-hodge https://nameberry.com/b/boy-baby-name-hodge
- bluejay2 2y agoYou see this in Spanish a lot too. Diaz is son of Diego, which is still a common enough name. But there seem to be many more examples where the corresponding name is now rather uncommon from what I can tell. I am thinking of examples such as Menendez, Ortiz, Juarez, and Ordonez.
- madcaptenor 2y agoLópez, Gómez, Gutiérrez, Suárez, ...
- pavel_lishin 2y agoBoth my endodontist and dentist have names ending in -ez, so I looked it up. I wonder if this is a common pattern across all cultures and languages - if surnames share some sort of phonetic pattern, does it almost always indicate a patronymic, or (whatever the term for your profession/place of origin) is?
- mathieuh 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_nominals https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_nominals It comes from the Indo-European genitive.
- mjd 2y agoThe examples that come to mind for me are Rodríguez, Martínez, González, Nunez, Hernández / Fernández, Sánchez. Rodríguez, Martínez, and Hernández are the 9th, 10th, and 11th most-common surnames in the USA.
- barreira 2y agoSame in Portuguese but with an -es
- anoncow 2y agoWholesome read. I didn't know that Robin comes from Robertson. So Robinson is Robertgrandson.
- gambiting 2y agoOne other thing that has disappeared from common use(although I have seen it done among some "higher" circles still) is using the husband's full name for the wife here in the UK. So if you have a man called "John Bridgerton", his wife would be referred to in certain circumstances as "Mrs John Bidgerton". Like you'd get an invite to the King's Ball, and it would say: "Hereby inviting: Mr John Bridgerton and Mrs John Bridgerton"
- cjs_ac 2y agoA real-life example of this is Princess Michael of Kent.
- kevinmchugh 2y agoVery old Americans at least still do this as well. My 100 year old grandma insists that using the wife's first name is only appropriate when the husband is deceased. My wife has a 100 year old grandfather and he until recently followed the rule as well. His last letter he addressed to my wife specifically using her own first name. This was a strange way to learn of my own death.
- triyambakam 2y agoThat's funny. My grandmother does it too to my wife. I think the fact that they write letters is also something very old Americans still do.
- linsomniac 2y agoKing of the Hill did it: "Hey Hank. Hey Hank's Wife."
- ziotom78 2y agoA memorable occurrence in this happens in "Sense and Sensibility", Part III, Chapter XII, when Elinor Dashwood learns that the man she loved and believed had just married was in fact free: “Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?” “At Longstaple!” he replied, with an air of surprise. “No; my mother is in town.” “I meant,” said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, “to enquire after Mrs. Edward Ferrars.” She dared not look up; but her mother and Marianne both turned their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and, after some hesitation, said,— “Perhaps you mean my brother: you mean Mrs.—Mrs. Robert Ferrars.”
- dhosek 2y agoIt had somehow never occurred to me before reading this that Dixon = Dickson and Nixon = Nickson.
- harry8 2y agoThere’s an English cricketer called Ben Duckett. His nickname among Australian fans when playing for their local team appears to be “Autocorrect” Autocorrectson sounds like a fine family name. In England it’d be “Duckyson” I wonder if there are real examples of more creative nicknames becoming surnames.
- cjs_ac 2y agoGrosvenor, from gros venor, 'fat hunter'.
- card_zero 2y agoThat's excellent. I'm intrigued by Beaglehole, Clutterbuck, Cronk, Dingus, Eggink, Footlick, Gimbel, Hipkiss, Hollobone, Limp, Midgette, Mincey, Muddle, Nettleship, Noblin, Ogletree, Owl, Pardon, Pickles, Puffinburger, Riddles, Smelley, Spankie, Splatt, Thicknesse, Toadvine, Tremblay, Tubby, Twaddle, Twitt, Underdown, Whatmuff, Windy, Winker, and Wrong, but they probably mostly have mundane and logical origins. The ancestral Pickles probably just pickled things a lot, for instance.
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- walthamstow 2y agoUnsurprisingly the family behind this Norman French aristocratic name owns most of west London. The Duke of Westminster is one Hugh Grosvenor.
- madcaptenor 2y ago"Autocorrect" as in "ducking autocorrect won't let me curse"?
- harry8 2y agoSomething like that I guess.
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- bpoyner 2y agoAlong these lines, 'Mc' and 'Mac' mean 'son of' in Scottish and Irish surnames.
- dghf 2y agoAnd similarly 'O' for 'descendant of' in Irish surnames (e.g O'Neill).
- layer8 2y agoAlso the famous greek hunter O’Ryan. ;)
- thaumasiotes 2y agoThere is an unusual Chinese family name, 欧阳 ouyang, which is sometimes anglicized into the form O'Young.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoLike O'Bama?
- fuzz_junket 2y agoI love O'Bama, the famous O'lympic athlete.
- psim1 2y agoMartin, son of Fly, the first time traveler and inventor of rock-and-roll music.
- soperj 2y agoTechnically Einstein was the first time traveler. He traveled one minute into the future.
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- raincom 2y ago"Fitz" is another patronymic: Fitzsimmons, Fitzgerald, Fitzpatrick, Fitzsimmons, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitz
- fjjjrjj 2y agoMy Norwegian ancestors arrived in the US as Nordhus surname, and left immigration with a completely unrelated -son surname. That happened a lot and I understand it's because they didn't speak English and the immigration officers had busy lines to process so they used a default name of sorts on the paperwork.
- sparky_z 2y agoThis is a common myth that often shows up in family lore and has bled into popular culture, but it simply isn't true. Historians are unanimous that it didn't happen (with perhaps some extraordinarily rare edge cases). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-... https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-isla... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island_Special https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island_Special
- crazygringo 2y agoYup. It was common in the 1800's and early 1900's for immigrants to change their last name to become more "American", to assimilate better. I don't believe this was a common thing to do upon arrival -- it was more like, when they wanted to open a business and be perceived as more American, more established, more trustworthy. It might not even be the immigrants themselves but their second-generation children, or even third generation. If you visit a cemetery with lots of 1800's gravestones, it's pretty wild to see crazy diversity of last names from all over Europe, that we just don't have any more. Ellis Island didn't simplify or change anything. And which shows that in many of those cases, it was indeed the children who changed their name.
- FactolSarin 2y agoMy family's last name was probably Schaefer in Germany. The earliest graves in America show them as Scheffert instead but shortly after they became "Shuford" which I guess they thought sounded more English (they were here pre-Revolution). I always find it funny they did such a bad job of anglicizing it. Shuford doesn't really sound any more English to my ears.
- soneca 2y agoI didn’t know English had a diminutive suffix (-kin). Is it used still in common English? We have it Portuguese (-inho/-inha) and I find them so useful. It always seemed a missing feature of English. Also, is there an augmentative suffix as well that I don’t know about?
- rrauenza 2y agopumpkin and munchkin come to mind. Googling, apparently napkin is also from that.
- rbalicki 2y agoThe History of the English language podcast talks about the word napkin in multiple places: [1] Podcast 110 https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2018/04/07/episode-110-dyed-in-the-wool/ https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2018/04/07/episode-110-d... [2] Podcast 133 https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2020/01/21/episode-133-breaking-bread-with-companions/ https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2020/01/21/episode-133-b...
- lolinder 2y agoEnglish has a few diminutive suffixes. Which one is used depends a lot on the shape of the word and the era, but the most common one today is -y. So a child's toy might be Beary, and the kid might go by Johnny. We also have -ling, as in duckling, and a whole bunch of less common ones [0]. You're right, though, that we don't use our diminutives nearly as often as the Iberian languages do. If you tried to use them as much as you would in Portuguese you would definitely not sound like a native speaker, but they do exist. Mostly they're used in the register of speech that we use when speaking to very young children (i.e. "baby talk"), in nicknames, or in older words that acquired a diminutive a long time ago and now register as just a word on their own. [0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_diminutive_suffixes https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_diminutive...
- pavel_lishin 2y agoAnother example: "kiddie pool". Also, I'll often refer to my child as "kidling" or "childling". English can be a fun language to play in.
- AbuAssar 2y agoIn arabic we have (bin or ibn) which means son of, and (abu) which means father of.
- amiga386 2y agoAnother one to add is that Japanese boys names often end -rō (-郎, "nth son")... including the very plainly named 一郎 (Ichirō, "first son"), 二郎 (Jirō, "second son"), 三郎 (Saburō, "third son"), 四郎 (Shirō "fourth son"), 五郎 (Gorō, "fifth son"), 六郎 (Rokurō, "sixth son"), 七郎 (Shichirō "seventh son"), 八郎 (Hachirō, "eighth son") and 九郎 (Kurō, "ninth son")
- kridsdale3 2y agoIron Maiden: Shichirō no Shichirō
- aleksiy123 2y agoI believe some Ancient Roman names are also like this: Male: Sextus, Septimus, Octavius, Nonus. Female: Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, Quinta, Sexta, Octavia, Nona, and Decima But on further investigation the males seem to actually be named after months https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zshd6h/when_and_why_did_romans_name_their_children_after/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zshd6h/when_... and the women are unclear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praenomen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praenomen
- ItalianPoetry 2y agoI don't know about Ancient Romans, but I do know a few Italian men with numbered names. In particular a Decimo (tenth), who was indeed the tenth (and I wouldn't swear the last). They are all, unsurprisingly, old :)
- ralgozino 2y agoThat's pretty convenient and easy to remember
- aitchnyu 2y agoIs Shiro a taboo name? Seen an ad for a big corp not printing 4 out of deference to the Japanese, since its the word for death. Or do people associate it with white?
- kr2 2y agoIn Farsi / Persian we have "-zadeh" which means child of (born from). Last names were not instituted in Persia / Iran until early 1900s and everyone got to pick their own, so there are a lot of *zadehs as it was an easy choice. So eg Hassanzadeh is child of Hassan
- aitchnyu 2y agoIn the New Testament, the governor actually asks the crowd "do you want a pardon for Yeshua or Yeshua Bar Abbas", Bar Abbas meaning son of Abbas, a common naming convention. The text officially goes "do you want a pardon for Jesus or Barabbas?"
- kr2 2y agoThis is still used today by Jews for Hebrew names. "Bar", the Aramaic word for "son", has in Hebrew its counterpart "ben" ("bat" for women). So your Hebrew name is eg "David ben Benjamin", David son of Benjamin. This is used anywhere to address you in Hebrew, eg for bar/bat mitzvahs, calling up to give blessings in synagogue, headstones, on your ketubah (Jewish marriage license), etc
- Anthony-G 2y agoHarris and Harrison are other examples of this kind of surname. In Dublin, the bus routes are bilingual and a couple of years ago I noticed that the Irish translation of Harristown is Baile Anraí¹. When I first saw “Baile Anraí” as the destination for a passing bus, I wondered where Henry’s Town might be. I then figured that Henry and Harris must be variations of the same name and that Anraí is the Irish version of both names. Sure enough, when I check this now, Wikipedia concurs². The article it cites states that Harry is the “Medieval English form of Henry. In modern times it is used as a diminutive of both Henry and names beginning with Har.”³ The surname Hanks may also derive from the use of Hank as a diminutive of Henry⁴ ¹ https://www.dublinbus.ie/getmedia/947fdcee-5f28-46e0-8785-abe37e9a2123/E2-Both.pdf https://www.dublinbus.ie/getmedia/947fdcee-5f28-46e0-8785-ab... ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_(given_name) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_(given_name) ³ https://www.behindthename.com/name/harry https://www.behindthename.com/name/harry ⁴ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hank#Proper_noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hank#Proper_noun
- codetrotter 2y agoHenry the Potter. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it heh.
- mjd 2y agoExcept that Harry isn't a nickname nobody has any more.
- KPGv2 2y agoIf you read the article instead of just the headline, you will find that almost all the names discussed are names people do still have. Jack, Dick, Bob, Nick, Bill, Robin, etc. are nicknames specifically called out in the article. The article does finish with Hob, Daw, Wat, and Gib. But most of the names highlighted are ones that are still in use. (I personally also have found that a lot of people don't realize Harry is a nickname for Henry, like anyone who wasn't alive for JFK doesn't know "Jack" is "John")
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- tibbar 2y agoA few more I haven't seen mentioned yet: * "Dob" is another old nickname for "Robert", giving us "Dobson"; * "Dodge" another nickname for Roger, hence Dodgson, as in Louis Carrol's real name, Charles Dodgson; * "Tibb" is an old nickname for Theobald, giving surnames like "Tibbs" and "Tibbets"; * "Hud" for "Hugh", giving us the Hudsons.
- mjd 2y agoThanks, I'm going to add these to the article. I'll credit you as "Hacker News user `tibbar`" unless you'd prefer something else.
- tibbar 2y agoNope, that sounds great!
- froddd 2y agoWhat about a surname like ‘Collinson’ — if ‘Collins’ is issued from this process already, would this be another layer of it?
- mjd 2y agoI guess it's Collin + son. Conceivably Collin's + son.
- fullstop 2y agoYou should look into Russian naming conventions. It wouldn't surprise me if some of those rules bled over into western names as well.
- hunter2_ 2y agoSimpson (from Simon) is an interesting one. Most of the consonant adjustments are for simplification (e.g., Robkins -> Robins, and Adkins -> Atkins) but expanding Sim to Simp seems like an outlier in this sense because Simson doesn't seem particularly difficult to say. I believe dropping the /p/ is common, even, depending on the dialect.
- SoftTalker 2y agoSimpson eh? I'll remember that name.
- Affric 2y agoWithout the p most English speakers would turn the s into a z because the m is voiced.
- russellbeattie 2y agoMy last name - Beattie - is also in the "Bartholomew" nickname group along with Bates/Bateson. Bartholomew means "son of Ptolemy", so the name is sort of "Ptolemy's son Bart's kid". (Fun fact: Just to drive the Brits crazy, many families in the U.S with that surname (including mine) pronounce it "bee-AT-tee" instead of "bee-tee". God knows why. Maybe it's an attempt to get people to spell it correctly.)
- fragmede 2y agoThe other pronunciation that drives the Brits crazy is that Bucket is pronounced Boo-Kay.
- madcaptenor 2y agoHuh... I had figured "Bartholomew" meant "son of" something, but I had no idea what Tholomew could possibly be.
- udev4096 2y ago[flagged]
- raldi 2y agoDon't forget Niklaus or Nicholson.
- teleforce 2y agoWhen I was in school in England the most common first names for boys are exactly the first names that were given in the article namely John, Peter, James and Williams. The first three are from the Bible names and the last one is not from the Bible but from the name of Williams the Conquerer or Guillaume in French. The other most popular ones are Andrew, Philip, Matthew and Thomas. Fun facts, most of English people have middle names but it always abbreviated (e.g John F. Peterson) and apparently it's considered very rude to call someone by their middle name. Later I've found that the typical English popular first names are mostly from the Bible, or to be exact the disciples of Jesus. In the Quran however, the names of Jesus disciples are not given but just called as Ḥawāriyyūn or the helpers/disciples. Similarly the names for friends or sahabat of Muhammad are not provided in the Quran. The ones that went to established the Rashidun Caliphates are very popular among Muslim for examples Omar/Umar, Osman/Usman and Ali. These three names are equivalent to the top three given in the article namely John, Peter and James.
- physicsguy 2y agoIt's funny picking a year on FreeBMD and seeing what names were popular then. At the moment old fashioned names are really popular - I met a little toddler called Margot last week! But I have to think that names like Sylvia, Lisa, Karen, Sharon, etc. might take quite a few generations before they come back into fashion. In the Victorian era names were pretty creative and different! Lots of ones that haven't come through as 'classics'. My great grandmother's name was Rosina for e.g.
- teleforce 2y ago>names like Sylvia, Lisa, Karen, Sharon, etc. might take quite a few generations before they come back into fashion. Sylvia, Lisa, Karen, Sharon might make a comeback but not Karen due to the recent negative connotation and has been considered to be a pejorative term [1]. Similarly most of the Jesus disciples names become common place, the name Judas is avoided like a plague, since it's considered to be a pejorative term equivalent to traitor based on what he did to Jesus. [1] Karen (slang): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)
- kgeist 2y agoThere're also cases when a nickname stems from the full name which no one has anymore. In Kievan Rus, the common form of Vladimir was Volodimir. Ukraine still has this form (Volodymyr Zelensky). The diminutive of Volodimir was Vova, which makes sense. Later, in Russia, Volodimir was replaced with the Church Slavonic form, Vladimir. So today diminutive of Vladimir is Vova (not Vlad, a common mistake in the West to call Putin Vlad).
- romanhn 2y agoOh that's interesting. Explains the other common diminutive of Vladimir - Volodya. And yeah, Vlad is short for Vladislav. My favorite set of Russian diminutives that makes zero logical sense to a non-native is: Alexander (formal) = Sasha (informal) = Shura/Shurik (very informal).
- kgeist 2y agoAlexander => Alexasha => Sasha And then with suffix -urik: Sashurik => Shurik
- MrVitaliy 2y agoThe surnames with the suffix -enko are the most known and common Ukrainian surnames. Where "en" is roughly son-of or a child-of equivalent in English, and the "ko" means a smaller, baby version. For example Kovalenko where "Koval" means blacksmith, Petrenko where Petre or Petro if from a biblical name Peter.
- nickpeterson 2y agoEmbarrassing how little of this I knew, especially with my username.
- ryanbigg 2y agoI wonder if Fitzgibbon fits this pattern? Fitz being “the bastard son of…” and Gibbon, like ape? Or perhaps Gibbon has another meaning?
- Ericson2314 2y agohttps://www.behindthename.com/name/gibbon/submitted https://www.behindthename.com/name/gibbon/submitted diminutive of Gilbert. My guess is its just like Robin: Rob + kin -> Robkin -> Robin Gib + kin -> Gibkin -> Gibbon
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- floxy 2y agoHow about Madison? Son of Madi...?
- zamadatix 2y agoMaddy was a nickname for Maude (before becoming a nickname for "Madison" itself) but that would make it a rare since it'd be from the mother's side. Random internet sources claim it's more likely to be a variation of "Matthew's Son" but none seemed particularly certain.
- bilekas 2y agoI’ve always been fascinated by how people of generations have gotten their names, it’s usually a good story if you can trace it back enough.. I always found it uncomfortable how in the US (more so than other places) you could just change your name with a fee and a piece of paper. That said a lot of my family who emigrated had their names changed in the immigration office while moving to America, at the same time that has become an extension of ours.. If my nickname was a surname, we probably wouldn’t be allowed a passport
- ttyprintk 2y agoThere’s a flip side: in Europe many centuries ago it was best for Jewish people to change their/our names to evade cultural prejudice. Europe and Napoleon in particular mandated unambiguously Jewish names. The privilege to change our name was liberating.
- larusso 2y agoReminds me of a great translation I struggled a bit at first. Gimli from Lord of the Rings is named in English: Gimli, son of Glóin. In the German translation his name is Gimli Glóinssohn. So back to English it would be Gimli Glóinson
- ttepasse 2y agoBy the way, there are two German translations. One “original” by Margaret Carroux which is closer to the English original and who collaborated with Tolkien back in his days, and a newer one from the late 90s by Wolfgang Krebe which tried to transform the text to something closer to spoken German. In the original Sam calls Frodo “Master” or, I believe sometime “Sir”, which is to be understood in the gentry commoner relationship. There is no real equivalent to “Master/Sir” in German. Carroux used “Herr” which sounds rather archaic to post-medieval Germans; Krege uses “Chef” which sounds too modern for the text. If I remember my childhood’s Carroux translation correctly she used “Gimli, Gloins Sohn”, so not the Scandinavian construction, but a grammatically correct, but still archaic sounding, German construction which is near the original and still got the vibe of Gloinson. Translation is tricky business.
- nicoburns 2y agoSome books I have read have left terms untranslated (typically rendered in italics) where the concept doesn't really translate. That might work quite well for master/sir.
- matsemann 2y agoYesterday I watched a Harry Potter movie with my GF. I was a huge Potter-head back in the days, she haven't read the books. So I tried to explain to her the huge discussions around the acronym RAB in the books, and how the Norwegian translator had guessed on RAS to match how other character names were translated. Led me down to this article which has a whole section on "difficulties in translation" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harry_Potter_translations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harry_Potter_transla... So how the mirror of Erised had do get a proper backwards name in Norwegian, the O.W.Ls needed a fun acronym as well, Tom Marvolo Riddle is translated as Tom Dredolo Venster to make a matching sentence akin to how it in English is I am Lord Voldemort. Gotta make the songs and poems rhyme, etc. The Norwegian translation is a work of love, and the translator Torstein Bugge Høverstad got quite famous here for his work.
- drivers99 2y agoSpeaking of nicknames, "nickname" was "an eke name" (an additional name) so people thought it was "a nickname", similar to how "a napron" became "an apron". That is, it's one of the words that was "a n-" but the n moved because it sounds like "an -"
- chuckadams 2y ago“Orange” got the same treatment, coming from “naranj”
- drivers99 2y agoI almost put that, but I was reading the entry for that in etymonline and it didn't fit what I was saying exactly. i.e. it wasn't "a norange" at any point in English (or was it?), but the process happened in another language that we borrowed "orange" from, and it would have been too much of a tangent to get into that: > Loss of initial n- probably is due to confusion with the definite article (as in une narange, una narancia), but also perhaps was by influence of French or "gold." https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=orange https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=orange
- nashashmi 2y agoAnother “son” that comes in is when put in a prefix. McDonald is son of Donald (i think this is Irish). In semitic languages, the prefix added is Ben like Benjamin means Son of Jamin. In italian, they add O’Donald (i think) for “of Donald”.
- acjohnson55 2y agoThe R->H nicknames are interesting considering the northern French "r" sounds like the aspirated "h" in English. Many French would pronounce Robert as approximately "ho-beh(r)". I wonder if this is a place where idiosyncratic spelling captured differences in pronunciation of the name, but the common given name never changed its spelling.
- m1n1 2y agoSome cultures had (have?) a tradition of naming each successive generation according to the next line in a poem or song. If you ran out of verses, you'd pick a new song to start over.
- wenderen 2y agoLawrence => Law => Lawson
- fanf2 2y agoOh yes, also => Lar => Larkin, Larkins
- 725686 2y agoSo Rich Hickey is Richard Richard.
- ComputerGuru 2y agoIn a similar vein: the origin of nicknames Junior, Chip, Trip, and Skip: When the father and the son carry the same first name, the son can be nicknamed Junior (this is commonly known). But he can also be said to be "a chip off the old block" or "Chip" for short. When the grandfather, father, and son all have the same first name, then the grandson is the third (or triple) of the same name - ergo "Trip". What about Skip? When the grandfather and the son have the same name, but the father is the odd one out. The grandson is now "Skip" with the name having "skipped" a generation before making a return.
- ttyprintk 2y agoI’m not so sure about Chip. Trace and Trey are like Trip. For a while, I’ve been looking for uses of Buster where equivalent to Junior.
- nailer 2y ago> We get Hodge / Hodges / Hodgson / Hodgkins from "Hodge", an arcahic nickname for Roger. I wonder if the Brazil Rogers - which are pronounced Hodger - are related to this older version of the name.
- thrdbndndn 2y agoCan someone explain patronymic names to me as someone from a different culture? So you name your son with your given name + son, right? But doesn't it mean he no longer shared the same surname with you? How does it make sense? (Edit: I'm aware it was a practice long time ago, but still.)
- thristian 2y agoIcelandic names follow that pattern. Björk's full name is "Björk Guðmundsdóttir" because she is the daughter of Guðmundur Gunnarsson. English-speaking countries generally don't do that. For a long time people had only first-names, and disambiguated with nicknames or patronymic names where necessary. Eventually as society got larger and more complicated, governments started legally requiring people to have surnames, and they more or less stuck. If you meet a John Williamson today, his father probably isn't called William, but he's probably descended from a William who lived in the late medieval/early modern era.
- merillecuz56 2y ago[dead]
- dghughes 2y agoBaxter is the female version of Baker i.e. a female baker (person who bakes for a living).
- gsf_emergency_2 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobkin IRC, one of the Strugatskys used this REnicked name on his brother
- OkGoDoIt 2y agoThis was so cool to read. I often think in English names are black boxes that doesn’t have deeper meaning (unlike Chinese where names often have literal meaning), so the insight here was great. And in hindsight mostly obvious, but I had never thought of them that way before. Nice find!
- jMyles 2y agoHow about Jenkins? Is it "Son of Jen", or some totally different formulation?
- madcaptenor 2y agoWikipedia has "Jenkins" as "son of John".
- bjarneh 2y agoThe guy has his blog going since 94. What a legend!
- timc3 2y agoIt has been written that the s suffix was also used by people that had a “master” and they would adopt their masters surname, trade or first name with the suffix. For example the worked for the Smith, they would become Smiths. Trouble is I can’t remember where I read it, but I also recall at least two people that were heavily into genealogy telling me the same. It might have been https://www.routledge.com/A-History-of-British-Surnames/Mckinley/p/book/9780582018693 https://www.routledge.com/A-History-of-British-Surnames/Mcki...
- ttyprintk 2y agoLook up occupational surnames, and the related possessive s. Roberts implies some servant of Robert, with Vickers being a mix. The actors in mystery plays are interesting to me. They’d play the same character their entire career. So King, Lord, and Virgin are roles according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname#Occupational_surnames https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname#Occupational_surnames
- hoseja 2y agoWow that's a lot of patronymics I wasn't aware are patronymics. Way more sneaky than the scandinavian -sons.
- serverlessmom 2y agoHere's an exception to these general rules (first names appearing in surnames) is Peterman: you'd think it was some kind of relation to a relative named peter, but it is actually a name for a profession. A Peterman was someone tasked with finding deposits of saltpeter for the production of fertlizer and gunpower. A partial documentation is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltpetre_works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltpetre_works A better narrative of this industry is in Ed Conway's book "Material World" https://edconway.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-material-world https://edconway.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-material-worl...
- queuebert 2y ago“Then in the distance, I heard the bulls. I began running as fast as I could. Fortunately, I was wearing my Italian Cap Toe Oxfords." - J. Peterman
- culi 2y agoBoth 'peter' as in the name and peter as in "saltpeter" likely have the same etymological origins meaning something like "rock" or "stone".
- dsego 2y agoYes, petrus is old latin or greek for rock or stone, Saint Peter was given the name for "the rock" on which the church will be built.
- anonymousDan 2y agoInteresting, never occurred to me so many English names are constructed in this way. In Ireland we have O' (e.g. O'Brien) that means 'descendent of' and Mac/Mc that means 'son of'. Also the female equivalents Nic and Ni (less common).
- prismatix 2y agoAnother interesting one: Dawson is David's son. I have a friend whose son is named Dawson and the father is David. When naming my own kid, I was curious of the origin of Dawson and finally put two and two together. Apparently it was intentional!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- krunck 2y agoWhat about Mason and Jason?