Thread: Odd/Different Family Names

Hello All!!

Well after reading through the ‘love of language’ post I got to thinking about how many members have names that are uncommon, different or otherwise out of the ordinary.

For example, until the internet came around and allowed me to do some easy research, I’d never ever seen my middle name outside of the family with the exception of a street in Victoria British Columbia.

It was my grandfather’s first name, my great grandfather’s middle name! It’s also my cousin’s first name!

That name is Audley. From what I can gather, just like my son's middle name, my father’s first name, his father’s middle name and his grandfather’s first name of Watson, it’s an old English name! The meaning seems to generally refer to something about a meadow, while Watson is generally referred to meaning Walter’s son but I’ve seen some in books that say that it means warriors son.

As always the internet allows ‘anyone’ to become an ‘expert’! That’s one of it’s downfalls!!

Audley - Meaning of Audley, What does Audley mean?

Well?? Does anyone have anything to share???

I suppose both my given name, and my surname are a bit different.
The most fun about it, to me, is that I am the only one in this world with that full name.

Anyways, my first name is Bjørnar, or Bjoernar for non-Norwegian writers

It litterally means Bjørn(bear) ar(angry).
So an angry bear basically
Back then it was interpreted as having the meaning of being a fierce warrior.

My Surname translates directly to Pure valley's bay.
Rendalsvik.
That is a place up North where my family originates from.
It used to be a small mining village situated on the hillside of a Fjord.
Unreachable by anything other than a boat, it must have been quite a place to spend hard winters..
Now, it is but ruins and all overgrown.

Not to fear though, as you can clearly see from this Swedish candy box, Bjørnar is not all that angry at all



(Sweet gummy-bears)

True story:

I had a client whose middle name was 'aroundthebend'. We joked about it a little bit, and I told her that at least her parents didn't try 'upthecreek' or 'overthehill'.

Ok gentlemen, living in NYC, I have met some people with some unique names. The first was a beautiful young lady, who went by the name of Sade ( pronounced Shad - ay). But her given name was pronounced Ab-sad- ay, the correct spelling was Abcde. The second young lady pronounced went by Mali (pronounced Mal-ee), but her given name was pronounced Fe-mal-ee; yep you guessed it her name was spelled Female.

I once worked with a young woman who's married name was Gasaway. She kept her maiden name for work purposes.

A long time ago, some Southern names tended to be unusual (at least to modern ears). One of my grandmothers was Clementine (or Clemmie), and the other was Rayford of all things.

As a teacher, you see it all name-wise; trends come and go. For a few years it seemed every other girl was Brittany, Heather, or Nicole (or some combination of the three). Or "regular girls' names with eccentric spellings: Shyan, or Kel-C. And I won't even get into all of the girls with the name of Japanese electronics companies: Toshiba, Yashica, etc.

Having second name or family name became more common in Finland just about few hundred years ago. Back then people took the names either after the places they lived or in many cases they were named after some personal incidents or characters. Many were named after wild animals or natural objects. The names was given in the manner to recognize the person, either by his character or by the location he lived.

Therefore names like bear hill, flower valley, goose bay, stream behind another, downstream, endless shore, small house, little birch etc are very common as well as little, tall, coward, strong, dogs etc. However, for most last names there is no exact translation in English.

My last name in English is something like 'place of many meadows' (in Finnish this is just a single word). It is not odd or different name at all: the place of that name still exist about 100 km from where i live. It become our official family name about 150 years ago. Before that date most people here used patronymes and the third name was used after location they lived.

Patronymes are nowadays rare but still exists in some families, specially in the SW coast with Swedish speaking families (this is a bilingual country). My wife was one: before we got married, her last name was simply 'the daughter of Henrik'.

someone may have posted this before How Many of Me
But an interesting US site.

Having worked for the INS and dealing with foreigners I saw them all. I could write pages about names. The one that sticks with me was the guy applying for Naturalization and when he came into my office the first words out of his mouth were "I want to change my name". His first name was "Jerko".

Do dweezel and moonunit zappa count?