Coffee as a last name

[Wilson Gray]

Does anyone know how Kofi Anan pronounces his first name? Just wondering.

-Wilson

On Dec 4, 2007 3:44 PM, Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at wmich.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Coffee as a last name
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Doesn't the source for "Cuffee" have open o in at least some of the
> West African source languages?  Also, Turner's transcription in
> Gullah has the low back rounded vowel, which stands for /^/ in other
> English dialects, but is close enough to mid back rounded vowels to
> undergo transfer to that class.  The presence of the noun "coffee"
> and the drink's color might have helped.
>
> Paul Johnston
>
> On Dec 4, 2007, at 9:45 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> > Subject:      Re: Coffee as a last name
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ---------
> >
> > At 12/4/2007 12:39 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >> I've also known black people
> >> surnamed "Coffee," which may be derived from "Cuffee," but that's
> >> only
> >> a WAG.
> >
> > I suspect there is evidence for this in the literature on slavery in
> > colonial times, perhaps particularly in the immediate Revolutionary
> > period, when blacks (at least in the North) thought "freedom for all"
> > included them, and adopted the white custom of using two names.
> >
> > Joel
> >
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