Secure Your Copy Whats In A Surname?: A Journey From Abercrombie To Zwicker Designed By David McKie Accessible As Paper Copy
everyone has at the start two parents, which means four grandparents, and eight grandparents, and so on until many generations back you owe your blood to thousands of people.
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"Had the queen been destined for a tennis career rather than for the throne, she might have appeared at Wimbledon as Mrs SaxeCoburgGothaSchleswigHolsteinSonderburgGlucksburg.
" An interesting book on surnames in Britain their history, origins, geography and current spread, The author writes entertainingly about something we all have and use although as he notes,st century familiarity uses first names in most communications where perhapsyears ago surnames, particularly for men were extensively used women generally enjoyed the courtesy of their title for men it was the bare surname.
Well worth reading.
The most interesting chapter of this book is about the names of characters in books, This is something that can wreck a novel for me, Mr McKie calls some character names “nudge” names they give you a hint of what youre supposed to think about them.
It begins with all the emblematic names in Pilgrims Progress Mr Worldly Wiseman, etc and continues through theth century Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Squire Allworthy, you know.
Not so much nudge names as howlinyourear names, Dickens is pretty bad at this Wackford Squeers, Sir Mulberry Hawk, Lady Dedlock, Esther Summerson, and so forth but his many bullseyes let him get away with a whole lot.
Well those was different times, and now we expect a little more plausibility in our novels, maybe.
But maybe not. When I see that a writer has given his characters names like Pirate Prentice, Roger Mexico, Brock Vond, Frenesi Gates, Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, Mike Fallopian and Genghis Cohen I think well, these novels are going to be likepage long Monty Python sketches “My names Smoketoomuch.
” “Well, youd better cut down, then, ” “Pardon”. But those are all Thomas Pynchon characters, His characters names have given me the unfortunate and Im sure wrong idea about the novels themselves.
I think well, these novels are not taking themselves seriously at all, so they must be silly goofy comedies, nothing wrong with that, but I dont want to read apage silly goofy comedy.
Im quite sure this is the completely wrong idea to have about Gravitys Rainbow, V and Vineland but its a major reason why Ive yet to read them.
And what about John Self, Lorne Guyland, Spunk Davis, Keith Talent and Nicola Six also totally stupid rubbish names, Martin Amis.
Even Henry James was fairly crap at naming his characters Kate Croy, Merton Densher, Fleda Vetch, all awful, and let us share a moments silence for the quite unspeakable Fanny Assingham.
I did struggle with Humbert Humbert too, Very ridiculous. But of course Dolores Haze, aka Lolita, is practically the greatest character name ever, So that made up for Humbert,
So, authors, I
beseech thee, you need to soft pedal the archness and curtail the camp when you name your people.
It is true that real life gives us some beautifully curious names, which Id complain about if they were in a novel, so context is all.
In my explorations of American preWar stuff I came across the following musicians from the South : Buell Kazee, Floyd Ming, Hoke Rice, Fate Norris real name Singleton LaFayette Norris, Posey Rorer, Estil Ball, Pendleton Vandiver, Gaither Carlton and the wonderful Bascom Lamar Lunsford.
I heard a reggae song recently by Pluto Shervington, And in my job I came across Mariella Bendova from the Czech Republic and and Creamy Wu from Hong Kong.
This book was a disappointment, a bunch of meandering mimsiness about surnames recommended for maiden aunts who cant take much excitement.
An enjoyable meander through the world of primarily British surnames, Not so much, as I had expected, a history of the development of surnames that would be a very short book but more a brainstorm of short essays on surnames, including their origin and meaning, but also the history of the study of surnames surnames in literature doublebarreled, triplebarreled, and made up surnames alphabetical discrimination against the Zs.
Some of these discussions get a little bogged down, but they're more than outweighed by regular interesting snippets such as how "White" hasrecorded spellings, ten of which start with a Q, or the story of how the surname MacGregor was banned for almost two centuries in Britain under pain of death.
The sheer variety and cultural nuance of British surname forms when compared to the more defined structures of Irish Ó or Mac, Balkan ic, Icelandic sson/dottir and other cultures, was an unexpected surprise, and is maybe underplayed by the author.
Could Dickens have been as creative had he been Bulgarian or Korean
Irish surnames feature very briefly as their owners move to England, and there are a couple of errors in the telling.
Ó Maoilriain is both misspelled and mistranslated, and the comment that Irish immigrants were one of the few groups not to Anglicise their surnames rather overlooks why Ó Maoilriain became Mulryne in the first place.
They're minor errors, though of the kind which make make me wonder if there's others in the areas I'm less familiar with.
All in all though, a worthwhile read pitched at a general overview level which doesn't appear to have been much written about elsewhere.
A lighthearted entertaining look at surname origins, patterns, trends and transformations through the ages, Some stunning examples of them, Mildly interesting look at British surnames and their history, The chapters on origins and changes are useful, that on how writers invent them quite fun, The author's professed support for multiculturalism is slightly undermined by the massive deal he makes about the establishment of 'new' surnames like Patel which we're told is the biggest rising surname on I think three occasions.
Like yes, immigration brings new surnames, and
Probably found this most useful as a future source of accurate sounding surnames I can steal for historical novels.
Which is niche. .