New English (?) name: Jhan

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 9:17 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The first masculine "Jan" Â I ever heard of in English was the once
> famous/infamous Jan Bakker.

Stabbing in the dark, I'd guess that that name is ethnically Dutch.
Once upon a time, I was acquainted with a guy of Polish ancestry whose
first name was Jan. He was a "boyfriend-in-law": my girlfriend's
roommate's boyfriend. Hence, the relationship was so tenuous that I've
forgotten his surname.

This masculine "Jan" is also unique in my experience. A WAG is that
perhaps Jhan was originally "Jan," and was motivated to modify the
spelling in order to avoid being continually mistaken for a woman,
_Jan_ as a first name for a man being rare in the U.S. BTW, isn't
there a masculine Jan [Surname] associated with the magazine, Rolling
Stone? He's also of apparent Dutch ancestry. And there was Jan who
"loved music.   _He_ loved singing. _He_ could play the noisy drum." A
brief history of his musical endeavors was contained in the the second
song that I learned in the first grade, right after Jump, Jim Crow.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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