Aramazd
Deity
I don't think my surname is bastardised, but since it was originally written in a different alphabet, it's possible
Bastardised Surnames
- Thread starter Rossiya
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Aramazd
Deity
Yep, that's it.
warpus
In pork I trust
My last name has never been changed.. It's hard to write and pronounce, but at least it's a great conversation starter.. or something.
ybbor
Will not change his avata
my last name is %$&#ing annoying! 12 letters long, German ancestry, and weird to pronounce (you talk about the evolution of the spelling of these names over time, but I think just as interesting is the change in pronunciation. I undoubtedly pronounce my name differently than my ancestors did, which is odd considering people can be zealously protective of the pronunciation of their last name). Originally it was 15 letters long apparently, and the form I hold both has missing and added letters from the original. What's interesting though, is that this whole name change split happened before America was even America, making it unlikely we suffered from the Ellis Island effect. So while my father tells me the name was changed when they got off the boat, I'm pretty sure my ancestors were just illiterate.
Aramazd
Deity
I like the alphabet, but I can't read it.
"yan/ian" means "son", literally an Armenian name would mean "Son of [last name minus ending]".
It looks like a whole bunch of U, N, and S to me.
Aramazd
Deity
Yeah, that's true, but I suppose if I could only read Armenian, I might think the latin alphabet looked confusing instead.
Rossiya
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I like the alphabet, but I can't read it.
"yan/ian" means "son", literally an Armenian name would mean "Son of [last name minus ending]".
Mmm, interesting. You Armenians are so uncreative.
Father John: Um, I name you son of John.
Many surnames evolved like that. When people travelled no further than the nearest market town surnames were not necessary.
If there were 2 Johns in the village you distinguished them by:
a) their father's name Mac, O', Ben, Fitz etc.
b) their profession - Smith, Cooper, Miller, Carpenter, Baker
c) some physical characteristic.
There would have been many changes from generation to generation.
Once the masses started to write things down the surnames got locked more or less.
I know lots of people named Johnson.
(And Jensen - which is almost certainly by far the most common last name among American-born Mormons.)
West 36
Can count up to 4
Mondschein- bastardation free! Sure, no one ever knows how to pronounce it but it makes me unique. I guess. We say mun-shine, btw, even if in German its Mohnd-Shine, but hey, its close enough. I've seen a few different spellings of it over here though, assuming they were based off the same name.
Aramazd
Deity
Don't most other surnames from other languages mean things?
It doesn't really work like that. Oftentimes it will be "son of [a trait]".
Mirc
Not mIRC!!!
My surname might very well be bastardized, but that's not common at all around here as my language and almost all the surrounding languages have almost perfectly phonetic spellings.
The only thing is that my surname is completely weird, aparently it doesn't mean ANYTHING in ANY language that I know of. I've been researching around this apparently, and there are only 2 families with this name - mine, and one from the Romanian town of Galati. Thing is, my family is from an area not very far from there (about 100 km west) so the families might be distantly related.
My surname is "Gogoncea" and it resembles the Romanian word of a certain pickle (gogonea), but I really don't think it comes from it, because of 3 reasons:
1) Romanian usually simplifies words, it almost never adds sounds in the middle of a word.
2) the stress is different, in this language the stress stays the same even after transformations that make the word unrecognizable - in fact the stress is probably the most stable feature of the language
3) the "c" is read as "ch" (that's the rule in Romanian - and in Italian too for that matter - a "c" before an "e" or an "i" is read "ch"). This sound doesn't just show up in a word out of the blue. It's generally either generated from a normal, hard "c", or a deformation of other africates. So it's unlikely that the word would have ever evolved from that.
The "cea" termination (read almost like "cha", but with a short "e" in there too) is apparently common for Slavic languages. I have no idea.
The thing is, my surname shouldn't really be this one - my great grandfather (I think) was adopted by some somewhat distant cousin of his - and so he got his surname. In fact, my surname should be "Vatra" which can mean various thigs - fireplace or place of origin of something. Now those members of my family that are not directly descending from the adopted guy - so those who kept the "Vatra" surname changed it into "Vetrescu" which sounds incredibly terribly awfully stupid IMHO.
The only thing is that my surname is completely weird, aparently it doesn't mean ANYTHING in ANY language that I know of. I've been researching around this apparently, and there are only 2 families with this name - mine, and one from the Romanian town of Galati. Thing is, my family is from an area not very far from there (about 100 km west) so the families might be distantly related.
My surname is "Gogoncea" and it resembles the Romanian word of a certain pickle (gogonea), but I really don't think it comes from it, because of 3 reasons:
1) Romanian usually simplifies words, it almost never adds sounds in the middle of a word.
2) the stress is different, in this language the stress stays the same even after transformations that make the word unrecognizable - in fact the stress is probably the most stable feature of the language
3) the "c" is read as "ch" (that's the rule in Romanian - and in Italian too for that matter - a "c" before an "e" or an "i" is read "ch"). This sound doesn't just show up in a word out of the blue. It's generally either generated from a normal, hard "c", or a deformation of other africates. So it's unlikely that the word would have ever evolved from that.
The "cea" termination (read almost like "cha", but with a short "e" in there too) is apparently common for Slavic languages. I have no idea.
The thing is, my surname shouldn't really be this one - my great grandfather (I think) was adopted by some somewhat distant cousin of his - and so he got his surname. In fact, my surname should be "Vatra" which can mean various thigs - fireplace or place of origin of something. Now those members of my family that are not directly descending from the adopted guy - so those who kept the "Vatra" surname changed it into "Vetrescu" which sounds incredibly terribly awfully stupid IMHO.
Rossiya
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Yes, but the prevalence of patronymic surnames you find in the Armenian language is much larger than you find in English or Italian or whatever. Icelandic being a massive exception.
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