All. Regarding. NEW 'Campaign'. "Find out where your name comes from and what it means!" Just take a

LegacyUser

Brett said: All

Regarding

This NEW Campaign from "FamilySearch" being:

Find out where your name comes from and what it means!







Is NOT the "Definitive" answer, it is not "It", it is not 'set in concrete' ... it is just a "Guide" ...

"FamilySearch" is ONLY trying to engage People in PARTICIPATION in "Genealogy"/"Family History".

This facility/function/feature is ONLY a "Guide", nothing more, nothing less ...

Either, take it; or, leave it ... DO NOT take issue or umbrage at it ...

Get over it ...

Do your own research ...

Please, DO NOT, 'complain'; or, 'take offence'; or, even, 'respond', to it ...

Please, just take a look; and, either, enjoy; or, disregard ...

Just my thoughts.

Brett

.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The problem is that in many cases, there have been numerous changes to the way the surname is expressed. Consider the following from my own ancestry:

My surname, Huber, uses an anglicized pronunciation here in the United States — hew burr, the way I and most people with the surname would pronounce it. It sometimes gets mangled into hew bert, which is usually corrected by the person giving their surname.

The actual pronunciation is German in origin, and an anglicized spelling is Hoover. That’s because the u isn’t “you”, but oo as in "who". The “b” is a soft “b” that sounds closer to a “v”.

The spellings of words are all over the place, especially with our American English language. Daniel Webster went a long way to correct the problem when he released his dictionary. It didn’t help the matter that the sources for our words come from a number of other languages.

Moving over to names, the problem is compounded because up until government mandated consistent spelling through programs like social security, most people were illiterate and would not know if there name was recorded correctly or not. Before surnames became mandated in spelling, most recorders and enumerators wrote the names as they heard them.

A good example of this is one of my ancestral lines, that of Wamsley.

Before visiting Adams County, Ohio, where the Wamsley family lived for centuries and descendants still live, I pronounced the name with an a that sounds like the a in “at” and “that.” However, that isn’t correct— the a should have a sound like it sounds in “ah” or wash.

The problem is compounded by an accent that is applied by some people when they pronounce Washington and it comes out as warshington or worshington. Thus these folks warsh/worsh their hands, etc. and Wamsley ended up being pronounced as Warmsley, which is often heard and recorded as Wormsley.

Note the colloquialism in pronunciation is not a new thing -- it is often regional. It isn't unusual to here a person from Washington State add an "r" in words like wash, just as it wasn't unusual to hear President JFK pronounce "Cuba" as "Cuber" at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Thanks, Brett - I rarely visit the Home / landing page so wondered where this page was.

After suppressing my usual hostility to FS "campaigns" in general, and dictionaries of surname meanings in particular, I was indeed entertained for half an hour or so in checking out some new names (and old) that appear in my family tree.

Surprisingly, I found most of the meanings quite plausible and was also interested to find I was the only user to have added certain surnames to Family Tree. Bet they are all variants of other names, though!

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: How interesting Tom - I'd always mentally pronounced your name as "Hoo-ber", which appears to be closer to the original - though I can't get my head round the concept of the soft-b.

As for Washington, a friend of mine is a native of the place in the North East of England of that name, and she pronounces it "Washin'n". No "g" and definitely no "t"!

Interesting diversions aside, it's important to understand how variable spelling was - often the result of educated clergy imagining how the labouring classes ought to have spelt their names. Thus in 1700s Devon, my "Marley" family was often written as "Marleigh" - same pronunciation, more refined spelling! I found it useful to imagine how a Devon accent would have rendered a name - though I suspect my idea of a Devon accent from that era owed too much to Robert Newton playing Long John Silver in Treasure Island!