Do you folks need help with name meanings?
I saw that you have tabs for name meanings on the Ancestors pages, but the first names that I have seen all say "We don't have a meaning for this name." Well, I have the meanings for over a quarter of a million given names, and I would be glad to help you with those. This website has been a blessing to me in my research and I would like to help you in return.
Answers
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I don't think FS should be in the "name meanings" business. (Quite apart from the meaninglessness of that phrase. [We don't expect a woman named Holly to be glossy green and prickly, right?]) Yes, onomastics can come into play in genealogy, for example when dealing with a family that's sometimes Haas, sometimes Házi, and sometimes Nyúl, but if I need to research name derivations or etymologies, I turn to a source about names, not one about family history.
(I don't know what source FS uses for given names, because none of the pages I've looked at had any information, either. I know that for surnames, they use a book on American family names by Patrick Hanks, which is OK as far as it goes, but is nonetheless wrong more often than not, because you can't do surname etymologies without considering the specific geography.)
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I agree that the origins attributed to some families in the Patrick Hanks book are lacking. There must be specific Etymologies out there in cyberland for different ethnicities such as English, French, Dutch, German, Italian and eastern block countries as well? With my Blankman (Blanckman) surname, most sources identify the name as being Jewish/Ashkenazi, which does not define my family at all? The generally accepted meaning refers to a person of fair complexion, perhaps blond and blue eyed, but in my family's case it might have referred to one whose occupation was that of a metal polisher? Metal when polished becomes "bright" and "shiny", two terms associated with "Blank" and "Blanck." Early ancestors of mine, having the Y-Chromosome Haplogroup of N-Y5003, were members of Finnish Calvary Units serving with the Swedish Military who may have burnished their armor accordingly. Name origins can be far more complicated than they at first seem. 🧐 Don Blankman, The Villages, Florida
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