RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: andrewalston on Wednesday 15 May 19 15:20 BST (UK)
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We probably all know the usual surname origins for the UK (occupation, place name, nickname and "son of"), but do other places follow similar schemes?
Scandinavia definitely has a preponderance of "son of". "Mac" in Scotland means the same thing.
But is "Ferrari" as common in Italy as "Smith" in Britain? If not, is there an equivalent common name?
Any experts on non-English-speaking parts of the world?
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There are many Spanish and Portuguese surnames that are the equivalent of the 'son-of' surnames in English, typically they end in 'ez' [or 'es' in Portuguese] - González, Pérez, Ibáñez, Fernández, etc.
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A Foreigner’s Guide to Polish Surnames:
https://culture.pl/en/article/a-foreigners-guide-to-polish-surnames
Tony
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Some Manx surnames; being the 10 most popular surnames on the 1881 Isle of Man census:
Kell(e)y
Quayle
Cain(e)
Corlett
Christian
Clague
Moore
Far(a)gher
Cannell
Quirk
(With thanks to ManxNoteBook ;D)
http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/famhist/fnames/sn1881.htm
No mention of Smith, Brown, Jones or Williams!
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In Belgium De before ,as example ,Smet De Smet , the blacksmith.
Van,is a bit like of or from so Van Cauwenberg.
There is not an exact prefix for son of ,like Mac.
Viktoria.
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Here are a few Quechua/Quichua/Kichwa surnames which are common [and some not so common] in Peru and Ecuador. Of course spelling is vary variable on these names. Sometimes they're adapted to the Spanish alphabet and sometimes not.
https://www.asociacioncasadeperu.com/2010/04/apellidos-de-origen-quechua.html
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No mention of Smith, Brown, Jones or Williams!
Is Faragher the Manx equivalent of Smith? (I'm only guessing but it looks possible). And I've always wondered at the number of Manx surnames starting with Q (I remember from long ago a paper authored by Quin and Quan).
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For common surnames, the Vietnamese seem to have a lot of Nguyen and Tran.
In Sweden surnames as we know them only really came into being in the 19th century, although they were used earlier in and around Stockholm.
My great grandfather was Lindquist/Lundquist, as was his father. The next generation was in the patronymic style. So my great x2 grandfather was born Jon Olof Pehrsson, and became Lundquist in later life. His father was Pehr Olofsson.
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No mention of Smith, Brown, Jones or Williams!
Is Faragher the Manx equivalent of Smith? (I'm only guessing but it looks possible). And I've always wondered at the number of Manx surnames starting with Q (I remember from long ago a paper authored by Quin and Quan).
The word for "smith" in Manx is gaaue (see Irish gabha, Welsh gof); I think occupational surnames are pretty rare on the island. "Faragher" comes from an Old Irish personal name, Fearchar.
In the Manx surnames starting with Q/K/C, it shows a remnant of Mac meaning son of, just as in the other Gaelic languages, where the "c" sound from "Mac" became attached to the rest of the name (often and Old Norse i.e. Viking personal name!) through linguistic rebracketing (in the same way that "a napron" became "an apron" in English).
This is further disguised because the "Mac" itself later dropped out of use, which didn't happen to nearly the same extent in Ireland or Scotland - and the spelling of Manx names was often anglicised further.
So for example, "Mac Thorcaill" - "Mac Corcaill" - "[Mac] Corkill" - "Corkill".
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Scots & Gaelic, Gow/Gobha for a blacksmith. The name Smith is Mac a ghobhainn!
Torquil = Torcull & Siol Torcull are the Macleod's of Lewis, presumably from Thorketil?
Slainte'
Skoosh.
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Scots & Gaelic, Gow/Gobha for a blacksmith. The name Smith is Mac a ghobhainn!
sometimes GOWAN Anglicised from Irish
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looking at some of my family names ..
KAVANAGH comes from Caomhánach - -handsome . .the first Caomhánach ( Domhnall Caomhánach mac Murchada), was a son of Dermot Mac Murrough, who persuaded the Normans to invade Ireland
Lawlor .. Ó Leathlabhair - a "half-speaker" - maybe the first one had a stutter??
McLoughlin - .. Mac Lochlainn (son of a VIking)
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Welsh has 'ap' for 'son of', from which some now familiar surnames have evolved.
Pritchard from ap Richard
Pugh from ap Huw
Price from ap Rhys
Powell from ap Hywel
etc
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New Zealand has surnames that are Maori transliterations
A name like "Lemon" becomes "Remana"
"Elliott" is "Eruma"
"Fraser" is "Pereiha"
Can be fun finding people!
https://www.sooty.nz/Pakehamaori.html
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In Belgium De before ,as example ,Smet De Smet , the blacksmith.
Van,is a bit like of or from so Van Cauwenberg.
There is not an exact prefix for son of ,like Mac.
Viktoria.
Thank you for this snippet, Viktoria, which made me go to google maps in light of my Van Steenhoven ancestry (who, I now know, came to the UK from Belgium, but whose family were from Oosterhout in Southern Holland, at least so far back as I've gone).
And lo and behold, there is a Steenoven close to Eindhoven, 48k away.
When I child I used to wonder about this impossibly exotic (to me) name, and wonder if there was some level of aristocracy in it, as you do. But no.
And of course there are thousands of them. Not at all uncommon in Southern Holland.
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At the risk of being pedantic, I should point out that only 2 of the Provinces of The Netherlands are called Holland! ;D
Nord-Holland (North Holland) includes Amsterdam; Zuid-Holland (South Holland) includes Rotterdam.
Steenhoven is in the Province of Vlanderen (Flanders) and is in the Southern Netherlands.
I lived in the city (and Province) of Utrecht for 16 years, and never lived in Holland ;D ;D
Also, a branch of my family goes by the name of Vanstone.
The Canadian side have changed this to Van Stone and have assumed the name comes from Belgium or The Netherlands ::)
Nope! Stems from North Devon and Cornwall ;D ;D
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I lived in the city (and Province) of Utrecht for 16 years, and never lived in Holland
Nor in Lincolnshire perhaps ? :D
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I lived in the city (and Province) of Utrecht for 16 years, and never lived in Holland
Nor in Lincolnshire perhaps ? :D
Nor in either of two places in Lancashire, these days referred to as Upholland and Downholland ! ;D
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At the risk of being pedantic, I should point out that only 2 of the Provinces of The Netherlands are called Holland! ;D
Nord-Holland (North Holland) includes Amsterdam; Zuid-Holland (South Holland) includes Rotterdam.
Steenhoven is in the Province of Vlanderen (Flanders) and is in the Southern Netherlands.
I lived in the city (and Province) of Utrecht for 16 years, and never lived in Holland ;D ;D
Also, a branch of my family goes by the name of Vanstone.
The Canadian side have changed this to Van Stone and have assumed the name comes from Belgium or The Netherlands ::)
Nope! Stems from North Devon and Cornwall ;D ;D
Thank you for this - I stand corrected. I had to have a lot of help with my Van Steenhovens in tracking them down (a lot of them, as previously mentioned), and evidently there is still more to find out - including naming where they came from properly!
:)
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As far as I am aware, Spanish and Portuguese tradition gives the mother's and grandmother's surnames as middle names for girls. I'm not sure how the boy's names are done.
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They aren't middle names; they are surnames. Both Spanish and Portuguese use double-barreled surnames. In Spanish, the paternal surname comes first and in Portuguese, it is the maternal surname that is first.
For example, in Spanish, the son of Juan López García and María Moreno Rodríguez will be Carlos López Moreno.
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Thanks for explaining that Erato.
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You can readily see how this is very useful for genealogical purposes. On the other hand, it is a damned pain in the butt if you're a foreigner with only one surname because, no matter how many times you tell them that, they insist on inventing some second surname. Usually your middle name winds up being taken as your paternal surname. And that means you are listed under an entirely false name [which, admittedly, can sometimes be handy because it means that the surname in your passport does not match your name on the list of people who are behind on their taxes].
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What do they do about people like me who only have one forename? :)
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Very good Erato, crazy, but very good! ;D
Skoosh.
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I was told once, by an Australian-born Vietnamese person, that Nguyen is the equivalent of Smith.
Dawn M
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And for me, who has done years of my Scottish/Irish ancestry, looking forward to future generations of my now Australian family - I wonder at the complexity of it all.
Immediate future possible generations - a mix of Scottish/Irish/German/English/Italian/Polish/Filippino… heavens running out of breath - and that is just without the inevitable modern issue of second marriages, split families, half siblings etc. etc.... !!!!!!
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I was told once, by an Australian-born Vietnamese person, that Nguyen is the equivalent of Smith.
Dawn M
I have been told that too, Dawn.
Pronunciation is interesting. I've heard native speakers pronounce it two ways: Noiyen, and NeWIN.
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The history of the surname is a little more complicated than 'Smith'. During the ancient feudal time, kings will often force people that belong to a rival family to change their last name as a form of submission.
That happened in 1232. After usurping the Ly Dynasty, the Tran’s clan leader Tran Thu Do forced the descendants of the Ly family to change their last name to Nguyen.
Same thing happened in 1592, after losing their dynasty, most of the Mac family changed their last name to either Nguyen or Leu to avoid retribution from the new king.
Then in 1802, the Nguyen family took over the throne, so a lot of people changed their last name to Nguyen in hope of earning favors from the royal family.
The Nguyen themselves bred a lot. Gia Long, the first Nguyen emperor famously had more than 100 concubines. Minh Mạng, the second emperor, had 142 official children.
The Nguyen was also the last feudal dynasty in Vietnam, so there was no new kings to force the same fate onto them.
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In western Kenya, the Joluo people have a system where the persons middle name indicates the time of day they were born, or some other noteable event. Names beginning with an 'A' are feminine, those beginning with 'O' are male.
For example, a great friend of mine was Joseph Adhiambo Suku. Wait a bit, you may say ... he has a female middle name ! True, but he was born at the same time as his mothers sister died, so he was given her name, Adhiambo. (Suku was his fathers name.)
My children were all given Luo names .... so as two of my daughters were born in the evening, they are both Atieno; third daughter was born in the afternoon, so she is Adhiambo; and my son, the last born, is Otieno (same as the girls - born in the evening), but he has the additional name of Obon'go .... a boy born after girls.
It can get a lot more complicated than the above ..... but the local people are used to it !!
And NO surnames as in Europe.
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Also, a branch of my family goes by the name of Vanstone.
The Canadian side have changed this to Van Stone and have assumed the name comes from Belgium or The Netherlands ::)
Nope! Stems from North Devon and Cornwall ;D ;D
Amanda Vanstone was a Federal politician here in Australia
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Thanks for posting this..I'm having a job identifying Lithuanian Latvian
Ancestors they seem to alter spellings everytimr they emigrate and have documents in Russian Hebrew Polish and English
The Goldberg's may have been Golden Gold or Goldstein
Friedman also Freed and Freedman within one generation between 1850+1930
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Also, a branch of my family goes by the name of Vanstone.
The Canadian side have changed this to Van Stone and have assumed the name comes from Belgium or The Netherlands ::)
Nope! Stems from North Devon and Cornwall ;D ;D
Amanda Vanstone was a Federal politician here in Australia
And her sister is still a judge here in SA, I believe. Supreme Court?
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Thanks for posting this..I'm having a job identifying Lithuanian Latvian
Ancestors they seem to alter spellings everytimr they emigrate and have documents in Russian Hebrew Polish and English
The Goldberg's may have been Golden Gold or Goldstein
Friedman also Freed and Freedman within one generation between 1850+1930
Transliteration through other scripts can always create anomalies. When I worked in a bank I once interviewed a prospective customer who was a Palestinian from Israel. She produced ID documents that bore very little relation to the name as she wrote it in an Anglicised form as they had been transliterated from the Arabic version into Hebrew then back to Latin script.
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A bit late but hopefully helpful;
"Faragher" comes from an Old Irish personal name, Fearchar"
In Scotland Farquhar, I believe pronounced as 'Feracher'...certainly to my ear ;D
Annie
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I wonder if Landsman could have become Landau Landis and or Lane in other countries .
Making names shorter could also be due to translation simplifications
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The Indian name 'Patel' is sometimes westernised to 'Farmer'.
Wikipedia:
The term patel derives from the word Patidar, literally "one who holds (owned) pieces of land called patis", implying a higher economic status than that of the landless.
Martin