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Likewise 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
by junto 2y ago
Likewise 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.
- kridsdale3 2y agoThis is why the fancy shopping in the UK is on "The High Street".
- saghm 2y agoI think "downtown" can also have somewhat mixed meanings depending on context as well. Growing up in smallish suburb, people used the word "downtown" there to refer to the busiest part of Main Street where a lot of businesses were, but after moving to New York, I had to get used to the fact that "downtown" was used to refer to "lower Manhattan", and what I would have expected to call "downtown" based on how I was used to it being used is referred to as "midtown".
- InitialLastName 2y agoPart of this is that Manhattan has had a shift in focus between the two urban cores, from Lower Manhattan (where the original town was, and from which the city emanated, and still the financial and governmental core of the city) to midtown (which has become the cultural core of the city) over the last century or so. The language of geography takes some time to catch up.
- graemep 2y agoExcept the terms that took hold in London are "West End" and "East End" rather than up-town and down-town. It may have been used historically, but I cannot recall ever reading the terms in anything historical. So I think, same principle, but different words.
- arrowsmith 2y agoMore likely it comes from the very common place name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton
- thih9 2y ago> Pritchard (from ap Richard) Also: Pratchett "The name Pratchett was a Welsh patronymic surname created from the personal name Richard." https://www.houseofnames.com/pratchett-family-crest https://www.houseofnames.com/pratchett-family-crest
- s3krit 2y agoMy surname is an example of this! Pugh comes from ap Hugh (though more commonly spelt in Welsh these days as Huw)
- saghm 2y ago> as in Upjohn (from ap John) Having never heard this name before, I definitely would have to resist the urge to make an updog-style joke if I met something named this.
- ahoka 2y agoThe would be “ap Dagbert”.
- matsemann 2y agoMy surename is Svensson, literally "Sven's son". But patronymic surnames aren't used in Sweden/Norway anymore, so at some point we just got stuck with whatever father was the last in line, a bit weird. Maybe I should try to figure out which Sven it was. I guess the tradition of it being the man's name passed on means that's why there is no common surnames with *dottir as it is with *son? (Not sure what the english version for a daughter is). Had some Icelandic friends in school (which still has patronymic names, moved here after they were born), and it was for them somewhat problematic at times that the siblings had different surnames (Björnsdottir and Björnsson), as people don't assume they're family, and especially not that the parents both had different surnames again. Like school pickup with a teacher not knowing the situation.
- SiVal 2y agoThe English form of daughter was also -dottir, but it was not common.
- matsemann 2y agoWhen thinking about names: in Norway it's quite common to take both parents' names now. So I'm MKS (initials), where Mats is my first name, K is my middle name being mother's surname, and S my dad's surname. I think it's great to have a connection to both families, and that my mother and dad combines instead of one having to "give up" some of their identity But what happens next generation? When a partner named ABC with two surnames should be combined with my name. Should a kid then be named DBCKS? And then it doubles every generation? Or should both parents pick one and pass on? And then which one? The father line as always?
- adrian_b 2y agoIf everyone had two family names, one from mother and one from father, then the two names of child would be chosen one from the two names of the mother and one from the two names of the father. The choice could be random or by preference. This would match the way how chromosomes are passed from the parents. Neglecting the crossover (whose effect is only that the sequence pairs between which a random choice is made are smaller than the chromosomes), for each pair of chromosomes one is taken from the mother and one from the father. The choice of which of the two chromosomes of the mother and of which of the two chromosomes of the mother are taken, is random. I believe that this would be a better system for naming people. A random choice of which family name to take from each parent might be preferable, to avoid the reduction in number of the possible family names, if some would be preferred much more often than others.
- Terr_ 2y agoTangentially, the way the leading "a" seems to fall off makes me think of Rebracketing [0]. Ex: "I found an ewt in the pocket a napron" --> "I found a newt in the pocket of an apron." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing
- mananaysiempre 2y agoZye! (Haitian Creole, [zjø], from French yeux [jø] “eyes”, which in French almost always occurs in liaison with a preceding [z], as in des yeux [dezjø], les yeux [lezjø], beaux yeux [bozjø], etc.)
- joiojoio 2y agoDon't forget the infamous ap Doc.
- foobarchu 2y agoThis one is fascinating, and something i'd never heard of before
- greggsy 2y agoInteresting I never knew this.
- AlunAlun 2y agoI came here to say exactly this. Delighted that it’s the top comment (or at least it was when I saw it!). Other examples are Parry (ap Harri), and Pugh (ap Huw) I wonder if there are similar examples from our Celtic cousins? e.g. from Mac or Mc in Scotland, or the O’… in Ireland?