Surnames

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Gully

Monkey in a seagull suit.
Apr 24, 2004
16,812
Way out west
As I'm led to believe, the Dutch never used to have surnames, and like the Icelandics today were just known as "Jan, son of Jan" etc... It was when Napoleon invaded in the 1790s that the French forced them to take surnames for administration purposes.

So by way of protesting against the occupying forces, many deliberately chose rude and offensive names like "Ruud Cockface" or "Hans Hopoffyoufrogs". Most of these have been changed and disappeared over the years, but there are a few still around. There was recently a cabinet minister here called Mrs Borst (Mrs Breast). Although rumours that the prime minister she served under had also gone down the same route are sadly false, as Mr Kok actually means "Mr Cook"...

I think this is true, I worked with some people who had really strange surnames during my time Cloggy-side...one of my colleagues tried to explain why this was and his story was pretty much what you said. I met a bloke whose surname was Pijnappel (Pineapple) which is pretty random and most of us thought it had been chosen as a joke...apparently not!
 


Lady Whistledown

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jul 7, 2003
47,645
Sadly, many of this country's more entertaining surnames have long since died out, for reasons of decency, or snobbery. I have one of those Christmas gift-type books lying around, which lists such genuine entries from UK censuses over the years as:

-Fanny C unt (born Colchester 1839)
-William Bollocks (Herefordshire, 1574)
-Mary A. Shagger (b London 1876)
-Harry Muff (b Bradford 1857)
-Euphemia Twatt (b Orkney, c.1800)
-Violet Fuckard (b Battersea, 1900)
-Willy Harriet Wank (b Leytonstone 1868)
-Enoch Shite (b b Staffordshire 1885)

and, er, Mr Brighton Gay, formerly of Cornwall, c.1881 :D
 


Eric Potts

Well-known member
Jul 26, 2004
1,873
Top o' Hanover
Surname: Ryan

This fine Irish surname, chiefly recorded in the Munster counties of Tipperary and Limerick, is an Anglicized form of the Old Gaelic "O'Maoilriain", descendant of Maolriain, a male given name, the first element of which has two possible interpretations. Firstly, "maol" may derive from the pagan Irish "mal", chief, related to the Welsh "mail", hero, and secondly, it may stem from "maol", literally meaning "bald, tonsured, but probably used here in the transferred sense of "devotee". The second element "rian" is so ancient that its meaning is obscure, however, it is believed to come from "rian", an Old irish word for "water", thus connecting the name with the cult of a water deity; hence, "heroes of Rian", or, "worshippers of Rian". The "O'Maoilriain" sept was located in Owney, formerly called Owney O'Mulryan, which forms two modern baronies on the borders of Counties Limerick and Tipperary. Mulryan and Ryan are now usually written as "O'Riain" in Gaelic, however, this is more accurately the name of a Leinster sept who descend from Lathaoir Mor, 2nd Century King of Leinster; the chief of this sept was lord of Ui Drone in County Carlow. The Ryan (O'Mulryan) Coat of Arms is a red shield with three silver griffins' heads erased. On September 1st 1865, the birth of Cornelius, son of John and Mary Ryan, was registered at Inishannon, County Cork. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of O'Maoilriain, which was dated circa 14th Century, in "Medieval Records of County Tipperary", during the reign of Gerald, Earl of Desmond, 1369 - 1374. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
 






crodonilson

He/Him
Jan 17, 2005
14,063
Lyme Regis
Mine is O'Nilson, so I think I've got some cross breed of Irish and Danish in me??

???
 


Dandyman

In London village.
Mine is due to my idiot great-grandparents trying to sound less Jewish and more English and failing miserably.
 














Frank Name Meaning and History
German, Dutch, Scandinavian, Slovenian, Czech, Hungarian, and Jewish (Ashkenazic): ethnic or regional name for someone from Franconia (German Franken), a region of southwestern Germany so called from its early settlement by the Franks, a Germanic people who inhabited the lands around the river Rhine in Roman times. In the 6th–9th centuries, under leaders such as Clovis I (c. 466–511) and Charlemagne (742–814), the Franks established a substantial empire in western Europe, from which the country of France takes its name. The term Frank in eastern Mediterranean countries was used, in various vernacular forms, to denote the Crusaders and their descendants, and the American surname may also be an Americanized form of such a form.
English, Dutch, German, etc.: from the personal name Frank, in origin an ethnic name for a Frank. This also came be used as an adjective meaning ‘free’, ‘open-hearted’, ‘generous’, deriving from the fact that in Frankish Gaul only people of Frankish race enjoyed the status of fully free men. It was also used as a Jewish personal name
 








hans kraay fan club

The voice of reason.
Helpful Moderator
Mar 16, 2005
62,771
Chandlers Ford
Mine is an occupation based one too. My forebears were apparently 'operators of bellows in iron-age metalworks,in SUSSEX'.
 


house your seagull

Train à Grande Vitesse
Jul 7, 2004
2,693
Manchester
my surname is a bit odd, but i know all about that. alas, my nan's maiden name was Slack - which i think is quite funny - and they probably came from ireland , the original is english/french though. there's loads of slacks in derbyshire which is where they settled after they run out of potatos or whatever in ireland.

the best thing is the coat of arms, slack - like the modern day word - meant 'slow' and on the original irish coat of arms there are snails !!!

if anybody has a coat of arms with a better image than snails on then pray do tell!
 




Tony Meolas Loan Spell

Slut Faced Whores
Jul 15, 2004
18,071
Vamanos Pest
Descendant of little Hane or Hann, son of Jehovah, the cock a pet form of John or "lad".

Personally I like to think it was orginiated by blokes WANKING all day.
 








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