O'Kun

[James Smith]

I work with a man named Sjoblum, "sea blossom".  There
were too many Johnsons on the boat his ancestors came
over on, so his progenitor was given the name of the
boat.

--- David Bergdahl <einstein at FROGNET.NET> wrote:
> I've also heard that shipping clerks overseas were
> the ones writing out the
> tickets w/the name changes.  I discovered the origin
> of my Swedish last name
> in H. L. Mencken who reports that when Scandanavians
> got last names in the
> early years of the 19th-century there were too many
> Johnsons, Andersons,
> Thomsons &c. based on the patronymic naming
> convention, so the Swedish
> equivalent of the Namenamt decided that people
> should use familar
> geographical terms--Berg, Kvist, Lund, Stro/m, Dahl,
> &c.--which is how we
> got to be "mt-valley" people.
> _________________________________
> "Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er
> nicht"
> --Albert Einstein

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