Bastardised Surnames

[Rossiya]

In another thread on this forum, I posted the following post:

What is the opinion of the average American (with a bastardised surname) regarding the "validity" of their current surname? Are they happy to accept a surname given to their ancestors? Do they consider themselves "more American" with their Americanised surname? Do many Americans switch their surnames back to the original spelling/form?

Upon further thought I was thinking that the post could star in its own thread. This thought was further anchored with the following post:

This sounds like an interesting topic for its own thread.

So basically I ask you these questions:

• What is your opinion of the average American (with a bastardised surname) regarding the "validity" of their current surname? This can also apply to the average Canadian, Australian, and so on.

• Are the people with bastardised surnames happy to accept a surname given to their ancestors?

• Have you any tales of bastardised surnames? I'm interested in the whole subject, which, if I could name, would be called bastardology.

• Do the people with bastardised surnames consider themselves "more American/Australian/Canadian/British etc." with their altered surname?

• Do you know of any statistics that show the trends of people in your country altering their name (or having their named changed)

• Do you know of any statistics that show the trends in your country of people switching their surnames back to the original spelling/form?

Thanks. I hope you find the subject as interesting as I do.

 

[LucyDuke]

Mine's not altered from the original Danish.

I don't approve of changing 'em "back".

 

[Rossiya]

Why the quotations marks around "back"?

 

[bhsup]

My last name is that which my father gave me. It was good enough for him so it is good enough for me.

• It's their name. *shrug*
• I am. Our last name was changed by immigration officials as my great-great-great-great-blah blah crossed from Quebec into New York.
• Well yeah, mine. It used to be Surprenant. It's French. It's not that now.
• I consider myself American because I am a citizen of America. My name has nothing to do with it.
• Sorry, can't help you with trend specifics.
• Again, sorry.

 

[LucyDuke]

Why the quotations marks around "back"?

Because I don't see the change, which includes, in this case, becoming American (or insert applicable nationality), as reversible. It's another chapter in the family's history. It shouldn't be erased.

 

[Rossiya]

Because I don't see the change, which includes, in this case, becoming American (or insert applicable nationality), as reversible. It's another chapter in the family's history. It shouldn't be erased.

Once you're American you always will be, you're saying?

 

[LucyDuke]

Once you're American you always will be, you're saying?

Not exactly. Once someone in your ancestry has been American, someone in your ancestry will always have been American, is what I'm saying.

 

[Arwon]

Mine was German about 5 generations back, but the dude changed his name deliberately to hide from the German Merchant Navy.

 

[Masquerouge]

What I quite don't get is why, in a place like the US built on immigration, foreign-sounding names get such a bad rap.
Take Ahmadinejad, for instance. How many times have we seen here on CFC "what's-his-name-jad" or other hilariously funny ways of pointing out the strangeness of his name?
Or #4 in this list:
http://www.campussqueeze.com/post/12-Best-Mullets-In-Sports.aspx

Dwayne Schintzius
When it comes to unpronouncible last names, Dwayne Schintzius takes the cake. No one knows how to pronounce that thing. But what's more important is that his head was always adorned with the road-kill type hair that put him on the map. Was he a good basketball player? Who knows.

Errr... dude, Schintzius is actually not that hard to pronounce.

Or take my last name. It's Dutch, and built on the Van + Name model (like Van Buren). And since I moved here, it seems my name is from Mars, and that no one has never heard of a last name with a space in it, ever. One example amongst many: I gave my freaking PASSPORT to the lady in charge of opening my account at the bank, and even though everything is ALSO in ENGLISH, and that there are SEPARATE fields for first and last names, my first name is now Julien Van. Siiigh.

So I would understand such attitudes from a country with a very low immigration, but from the US? Doesn't EVERYBODY has a foreign-sounding name?

EDIT: and then nobody finds anything wrong with the last name Willoughby.

 

[skadistic]

Ahmadinadumbnuts!

My last name is not even close to the proper original spelling (see custom title). But when you have Germans signing in illiterate Irish at ports of entry names are bound to get butchered.

 

[Rik Meleet]

Van. Siiigh.

Are you sure that it is Dutch ?
We don't use triple i in our language, not even double i.

My surname (and no, it is not "Meleet") is so 100% Dutch that it won't be bastardized in any Dutch speaking country. However, when I say my surname for people to write doen then it isn't always written down correctly since it sounds similar to other possible surnames. And mine is so unique that everyone on earth with my surname is directly related to me.

In English speaking countries the double "a" in my surname is verbally shortened to sound like a single "a". And writing it correctly when I read it out to them is usually a problem as well, since it's largely unknown that a double "a" is a perfectly normal letter-combination.

 

[Rossiya]

What I quite don't get is why, in a place like the US built on immigration, foreign-sounding names get such a bad rap.
Take Ahmadinejad, for instance. How many times have we seen here on CFC "what's-his-name-jad" or other hilariously funny ways of pointing out the strangeness of his name?
Or #4 in this list:
http://www.campussqueeze.com/post/12-Best-Mullets-In-Sports.aspx


Errr... dude, Schintzius is actually not that hard to pronounce.

Or take my last name. It's Dutch, and built on the Van + Name model (like Van Buren). And since I moved here, it seems my name is from Mars, and that no one has never heard of a last name with a space in it, ever. One example amongst many: I gave my freaking PASSPORT to the lady in charge of opening my account at the bank, and even though everything is ALSO in ENGLISH, and that there are SEPARATE fields for first and last names, my first name is now Julien Van. Siiigh.

So I would understand such attitudes from a country with a very low immigration, but from the US? Doesn't EVERYBODY has a foreign-sounding name?

EDIT: and then nobody finds anything wrong with the last name Willoughby.

I understand your pain. I thought my surname was easily pronounceable, and it is, but one silly person pronounced it wrong, and then it gets spelt wrong sometimes. Sounds trivial, but I think one of the most offensive indirect things you can do to a person is spell their name wrong.

 

[Masquerouge]

Are you sure that it is Dutch ?
We don't use triple i in our language, not even double i.

good one!

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I don't think it is just an American/Canadian/Australian thing. My last name changed as it moved from Normandy to England several centuries ago but not as it crossed the Atlantic. Any time anyone with a surname moves from a place that speaks one language to a place that speaks another, this is at risk of happening. But languages evolve and so should names.

 

[Rossiya]

I don't think it is just an American/Canadian/Australian thing. My last name changed as it moved from Normandy to England several centuries ago but not as it crossed the Atlantic. Any time anyone with a surname moves from a place that speaks one language to a place that speaks another, this is at risk of happening. But languages evolve and so should names.

For the record, I did mention how it happened in Britain as well as other countries ("etc.").

 

[Fifty]

I really don't give a crap about my surname.

I heard an interview with a guy the other day who was about 50 years old, and his last name used to sound a lot like "Kruschev" so people would make fun of him, and so he's been tormented by his last name and hated it for years, so just the other day he legally changed his name to "In God We Trust"

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

The bus driver?

 

[Yui108]

In sweden my family's name was Johnson, but then the when we arrived in America many people in our town (Rockford) were named Johnson and my Great Great Grandfather, being the original spirit he was, changed it to Chanel, after our priest. The only problem? He was completely illiterate, so therefore on each birth certificate for his four children he spelled the last name differently! On ours we wound up with Chenel, and it has been so sense.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

See, that's at least interesting.

 

[emzie]

Mine's Swiss but my family pronounces it quite wrong. My great grandfather was an alcoholic who never was around his son, so my grandfather had to guess at the pronunciation. He Americanized it. I'm seriously considering switching to my mother's last name... I like it more.