LL-L "Names" 2007.06.26 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  26 June 2007 - Volume 02

=========================================================================

From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Travels" 2007.06.25 (02) [E]

South America has a long track record of "Hispanicizing" other
nationalities. José Szapocznik doesn't seem any stranger to me than Chile's
national hero of independance, Bernardo O'Higgins.  Closer to our Lowlands
hearts, we've discussed Argentinian Afrikaans names before.

Paul Finlow-Bates

----------

From: Karl-Heinz Lorenz <Karl-Heinz.Lorenz at gmx.net>
Subject: LL-L "Travels" 2007.06.24 (04) [E]

Ron wrote:
> ...
> The surname Hahn does not mean what it seems to ("cock," "rooster"). It is
> a
> contracted form of Hagen, which survives in many German dialects. The
> English equivalent is the fairly rare name Hawn (as in Goldie Hawn).  The
> names go back to hag (haag) > English "haw", namely 'grove', 'thicket',
> etc., surviving in "hawthorn" for instance.  Hagen was the setter in or by
> the hag.  Hahn and Haan (the latter spelling being predominant in the
> Netherlands, often extended to de Haan) appears to be of Saxon origin,
> although it is now found over most of Germany and the Netherlands.
> ...

Goldie Hawn's full name is Goldie Jean Studlendgehawn. Confer:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/172/story_17266_1.html

"Studlendgehawn", is it Dutch, German, Yiddish, Scandinavian ...? Maybe the
original spelling is "Studlendgehaan" or "-hahn". Any idea?

Regards,
Karl-Heinz

----------

From: R. F. Hahn < sassisch at yahoo.com>
 Subject: Names

Thanks, Karl-Heinz.  I didn't know about Goldie's real name, and, no, I have
no idea how to analyze it, am assuming it was "severely respelled," which
used to be a common fate of surnames in America.  However, Hawn is an
existing English surname.

As for "strange" combinations of given names and surnames, this is of course
very common in the Americas (all of them) and to a degree in Southern
Africa, Australia and New Zealand as well.  I believe we are currently only
witnessing the beginning of this.  In part, I believe, it is still novel
because people haven't yet been sufficiently exposed to real people in other
country (and I'm not singling out our Ronald here).  Your average American
doesn't see anything particularly weird about name combinations like, say,
John Steinbeck, Michelle Kwan, Hank Luisetti, or Eric Shinseki (all of them
real). But combinations involving non-English given names still take him or
her by surprise (e.g., Emílio Henrique Baumgart, Francisco Adolfo de
Varnhagen, Reynaldo Hahn, Paulo Miyashiro, or Emilio Kosterlitzky -- also
all real), mostly because he or she is not aware of or rarely thinks about
immigration to parts of the world other than English-speaking ones.  And, as
Paul mentioned, there are descendants of Americans and other English
speakers in other countries, such as Vicente Fox and Dante Ferry.

Regards,
Reinhard
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20070626/2a50f6de/attachment.htm>