email "your name comes from…" needs improving
Family history is endlessly fascinating, and surname backgrounds can throw odd sidelights onto the complex picture. But the familysearch "discover" webpage offers surprisingly little.
For instance, my surname "Humphreys" comes from the Christian name "Humphrey", an obvious shortening of "Humphrey's son". The name first appears in England as a forename about 1000AD, a bit before the Norman invasion. It may derive from a French pronunciation of the Humfrid clan, who governed Swabia and were Electors of the Holy Roman Emperor in those days.
But Familysearch doesn't say so.
A relative discovered 15 different forms of the surname used in Ireland 1650-1900, even "Umphreys". Our own family probably started as Humphreys, and added an "s" to their spelling in the 1750s. Familysearch only mentions two spellings.
Their information comes from a single source. With a bit of work this could be a useful and informative addition to their service. However at the moment it is inadequate.
Comments
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Given FamilySearch's limited resources, I don't think it makes any sense for them to get into onomastics. The name-origins fluff pieces just need to go away: if people want that level of initial encyclopedia lookup, they can easily get it without FS's involvement.
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The reason I haven't given your idea the thumbs-up is that I believe the email (together with its link) needs to be scrapped, rather than improved. As Julia suggests, FamilySearch should not be adding this type of material, especially as the specific sources (surname dictionaries) are full of flaws in providing these "origins" of surnames. From comments made on this forum, they appear to have been responsible for causing upset, rather than insight.
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But because onomastics is my other hobby....
Charlotte Mary Yonge wrote in 1863:
There is a race of names, chiefly German, beginning with hun, that it would seem natural to ascribe to the Huns of Attila [...]. The word hun, however, also means a stake, and it is most according to the ordinary analogy of nomenclature to suppose the names thus commencing were used in the sense of a stake, meaning either the weapon or that the bearer was strong annd straight as a stake or a support, like the staff in Gustav.
The names of this commencement are Huno, Hunnerich, latterly lost in Heinrich, Hunold, [...] and Hunifred, which the French much affected in the form of Onfroi, which belonged to one of the short-lived kings of Jerusalem, and was Latinized as Onuphrius. In the form of Humfrey it was much used by the great house of Bohun; and through his mother, their heiress, descended to the ill-fated son of Henry IV., who has left it an open question whether dining with Duke Humfrey alludes to the report that he was starved to death, or to the Elizabethan habit for poor gentility to beguile the dinner-hour by a promenade near the tomb of Duke Humfrey Stafford in old St. Paul's. From being a noble and knightly name, Humphrey, as we barbarously spell it, came to be a peasant's appelation, and now is almost disused.
(I find it especially amusing how she calls the -ph- spelling barbarous.)
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