American Language Supplement 2 (86 page)

Kramoris says that the Slovaks in America rejoice when they happen to bear surnames which fall in with American speechways,
e.g., Kuban, Toman, Urban
, and
Polak
or
Polack
. Those with more difficult names sometimes find it so hard to teach Americans how to pronounce them that they are abandoned altogether. For example:

The discussion of Czech surnames in American in AL4,
²
based on the studies of the Right Rev. J. B. Dudek,
³
needs no amplification here. Russian and Ukrainian names, save those borrowed by Jews, are relatively rare in this country, and I know of no adequate investigation of them.
⁴
The American Lithuanians, who are Balto-Slavs, and thus bridge the gap between the Slavs and the Teutonic peoples, are fortunate in that their surnames, taking one with another, are considerably more amenable to American speech habits than those of the Poles, and that they are thus under less
pressure to change them. Such names as
Klypa, Surgailis, Grigonis, Varnas, Asmantas
and
Zadeikis
may seem a bit strange to a 100% American who encounters them for the first time, but they do not really alarm him. There are, however, other Lithuanian names that do, especially in their written form, and their bearers are thus constrained to change them. One of the commonest changes is made by substituting English consonants for the Lithuanian consonants, so that
Sǔekevičius
, for example, becomes
Sukevicius
and
Valančiūnas
becomes
Valanciunas
. This, of course, involves a change in pronunciation, but it is sometimes only slight. Other names are changed by omitting the original endings,
e.g., -aitis, -onis
and
-unas
, which are authentically Lithuanian, and
-evicius, -avicius, -auska
and
-inskas
, which are Polish. Thus
Norkaitis
becomes
Norkat, Keturakaitis
becomes
Keturakat, Šalinskas
becomes
Shalins, Jakubauskas
becomes
Jakubs
, and
Bertašius
becomes
Bertash
or
Bartash
. Sometimes the same name is changed differently by different members of the same family,
e.g., Aukštikalnis
, meaning a high hill, which is converted into
Colney
by one Lithuanian and into
Hill
by his cousin. Finally, there are the usual bold leaps to English names, sometimes related and sometimes not,
e.g., Alksninis
to
Andrews, Tamošitis
to
Thomas, Bogdžiūnas
to
Borden
, and
Pilipavičius
and
Pilipauskas
to
Philipps
.
¹
As in Russian, surnames are inflected for gender, so the wife of a man named
Vabalas
is Mrs.
Vabalienē
. Moreover, there is a special inflection to distinguish unmarried women, so that the daughter of this couple is Miss
Vabalaitē
. At home in Lithuania “it would be unthinkable and utterly ridiculous” to speak of
Mrs
. or
Miss Vabalas
, but in America these old inflections have broken down, and the masculine form is used “regardless of the sex of the person referred to.”
²
Says the paper just quoted:

The other Baltic peoples have varying fortunes when they bring their names to America. The Finns, who are neither Slav nor Teutons, but Finno-Ugrians and hence allied to the Hungarians, have plenty of surnames that are quite easy for Americans and call for no change,
e.g., Ikola, Hakala, Talvio, Holsti, Irkonen, Kallar, Kesti, Zilliacas
and
Kosola
, but there are also others that pop the Yankee eye even when they do not strain the Yankee larynx,
e.g., Koskenniemi, Sillanpää, Voionmaa, Tuomikoski, Päivärinta, Wuorijäri, Vuolijoki, Wäänänen
and
Määrälä
, and these must be changed. Some of the old forms that are commonly abandoned, along with new forms adopted in their places, are listed in AL4
¹
Many more are to be found in a paper by John Ilmari Kolehmainen, published in
American Speech
.
²
Kolehmainen says that these changes are most frequent in the large cities, “where the pressure for phonological adjustment has been stronger,” and least in the rural regions. Names are simplified by dropping their prefixes,
e.g., Niemi
from
Parhaniemi, Syrjäniemi
and
Kangasniemi, Saari
from
Pyöriasaari, Koski
from
Kalliokoski
, and
Maki
(often spelled
Mackey
or reduced to
Mack
) from
Kaunismäki, Myllymäki, Kortesmäki, Lamminmäki, Niinimäki
and many other names in
-mäki
(Finn, hill); by dropping their suffixes,
e.g., Niemi
from
Nieminen, Kallio
from
Kalliokowski, Lamp
from
Lamppinen, Wain
from
Wäinömöinen
, and
Maki
from
Mäkelä, Mäkitalo, Mäkivuori
and their cognates; by dropping both prefix and suffix,
e.g., Kane
from
Nykänen;
by more or less crude transliteration,
e.g., Harris
from
Harrus, Marlowe
from
Määrälä, Jervey
from
Järvi, Perry
from
Piira, and William
(
s
)
from
Wiljamaa;
by translation, either of the whole name or of a part,
e.g., Sandhill
from
Hietemäki
(Finn,
hiekka
, sand;
mäki
, hill),
Lake
from
Järvinen
(Finn.
järvi
, lake),
Rose
from
Ruusu, Stone
from
Kiviniemi
(Finn.
kivi
, stone),
Churchill
from
Kirkkomäki
, and
Smith
from
Seppänen
(Finn.
seppä
, blacksmith); and by the bold assumption of unrelated but popular British names,
e.g., Harrison
for
Pirilä, Stephens
for
Nousiainen, Daniels
for
Puhakka
, and
Kelley
for
Karikanta
. Kolehmainen says that “the name
Wilson
has had the greatest fascination.” The long cultural dependence of Finland upon Sweden introduced many Swedish and other Scandinavian surnames, and large numbers of Finns arrived in the United States bearing them – in different groups, according to Kolehmainen, from 20 to nearly 50%. Among these names “the most common were
Anderson, Abrahamson, Erickson, Gustafson, Hendrickson, Jacobson, Johnson, Larson, Michelson
and
Peterson
,” with
Johnson
the commonest by far. Most of them have been retained in the United States.
¹

The Finnish language is as unlike the Scandinavian languages, fundamentally, as English is unlike Arabic, but it has borrowed a large number of terms from them, and its way of representing vowel and consonant sounds in writing closely resembles that of Swedish. What happens to certain of those sounds in America, when they are imported in Swedish surnames, is discussed at some length in AL4,
²
mainly on the authority of Roy W. Swanson.
³
Some observations in a subsequent study by E. Gustav Johnson may be added here, though it deals mainly with Swedish place-names.
⁴
Johnson says that the custom of using surnames, in our sense of the word, did not become general among the Swedish peasantry until “the early part of the Nineteenth Century.” Before that patronymics were used, as among the medieval Jews, so that the son of
Johann Gustafsson
, on being baptized with his grandfather’s
given-name, became
Gustaf Johansson
, and
his
son in turn, named
Johann
after his grandfather, became
Johann Gustafsson
. “Thus some Christian names would be continued in a family from generation to generation, but no definite
family
name would be associated with them.” When these patronymics began to be made permanent a difficulty arose, for a daughter who, in the past, would have been
Anna Gustafsdotter
,
¹
became
Anna Gustafsson
, which set the yokels to tittering. In time they got used to it, and many an
Anna Gustafsson
is to be found in both Sweden and America today, but the incongruity set them to hunting for other surnames, and they soon had a stock comprising all the familiar categories. The Swedish government helped the process along by circulating the suggestion that various common nouns be combined in euphonious forms, and the result was a great proliferation of names in
alm
(elm),
kvist
(twig),
lund
(grove),
strand
(shore),
sten
(stone),
dal
(valley),
berg
(mountain),
ek
(oak) and
gren
(branch). Says Johnson: