American Language Supplement 2 (94 page)

1
A Tragedy of Surnames, by Fayette Dunlap,
Dialect Notes
, Vol IV, Part I, 1913, pp. 7–8.

2
I am indebted here to Mr. Hartford
Beaumont
, of New York; private communication, March 11, 1938.

3
The last five are from Corruptions. by Francis Dale, a letter to the New York
Times
dated April 16, 1929.

4
The last four are reported from Vermont by Mr. Paul St. Gaudens; private communication, Nov. 1, 1943. He tells me that his own name is frequently changed to
Gordons
or
Gordon
.

5
p. 112.

6
p. 482.

7
A Diary of America; New York, 1839, p. 153.

8
It is not listed by Ewen, but Charles Wareing Bardsley, in his Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames; London, 1901, reports that there was a Thomas
Paybodie
at Oxford in 1615. What the name means, he goes on, “I cannot say.”

9
But the name of the Missouri river town is pronounced
Jirrárdo
.

10
I am indebted here to Lieut. Col. F. G. Potts, U.S.A., ret., of Mt. Pleasant, S. C.; private communication, Jan. 20, 1945.

1
The Anglicization of Italian Surnames in the United States,
American Speech
, Feb., 1943, pp. 26–32.

2
Frances
Winwar
is a well known woman writer who was brought from her native Italy at the age of seven as
Francesca Vinciguerra
.

3
Says Dr. Vincenzo Campora in Hammonton Notes,
Columbus
(New York), Sept., 1945, p. 7: “Hammonton was … founded by Charles K.
Landis
, a Philadelphia gentleman whose original name in the Seventeenth Century was
Landi
, changed to
Landis
when the family immigrated to America from Italy.”

4
Says Campora, just quoted, p. 36: “Lino
Rubba
is an executive of high calibre and has a very amiable personality. So is his worthy partner, Frank
Rubba
. Another brother of theirs is Capt.
Russell
, M.D., serving overseas.”

5
Here I am indebted to Mr. Charles C. Arensberg, of Pittsburgh.

1
See AL4, pp. 493–94.

2
United Press dispatch from Chicago, July 8, 1941. On April 29, 1947, a Baltimorean named Henry Wise Wood
Distler
petitioned the local Circuit Court for permission to resume the ancient surname of his family, to wit,
Distler und Derecsenyi zu Dercsen
, and it was granted by Judge Edwin T. Dickerson.

3
Congressional Record
, July 2, 1946, p. 8295.

4
This is from the Pittsburgh court records, and I am indebted for it to Mr. Charles C. Arensberg.

5
See AL4, pp. 485–86.

6
I take most of these from The Magyar in America, by D. A. Souders; New York, 1922. See also AL4, p. 496.

7
For Rumanian names see AL4, p. 494.

1
The Syrian author and painter, Kahlil
Gibran
(d. 1931) was the author of a mystical book, The Prophet (written in English) that has had large sales for years.

2
I take these examples from Arabic-Speaking Americans, by H. I. Katibah and Farhat Ziadeh; New York, 1946.

3
Mr. Saroyan tells me that family tradition makes the original form of the name
Sarou Khan
, meaning blond lord, but the present form has been in use for generations.

4
Not all Armenian surnames end in -
ian
or -
yan
. In proof hereto Mr. Saroyan offers
Ardzeooni, Chituni, Rushdooni. Totoventz
and
Charentz
.

5
Westbrook Pegler’s column, Nov. 13, 1946.

6
I am indebted here to Mr. Richard Badlian, of Boston; private communication, Sept. 28, 1936. Relatively few actual Turks have immigrated to America: the persons of Turkish birth shown by the census returns are mainly Armenians, Greeks or Jews. It was not until 1924 that Mustafa Kemal decreed that all Turks should have surnames, and not until 1934 that the Ankara National Assembly implemented this decree with legislation imposing a fine of $45 for non-compliance after one year. At that time, according to a United Press dispatch from Istanbul, July 21, no more than two or three hundred Turkish families already had surnames; the rest were content with given names alone. Kemal himself adopted the name of
Atatürk
.

1
Gypsy Fires in America, by Irving Brown; New York, 1924, p. 20.

2
The Gypsies, by Charles G. Leland; fourth edition; Boston, 1886, pp. 304–07.

3
Chinatown Inside Out, by Leong Gor Lum; New York, 1936, p. 55.

4
Personal Names in Hawaii, by John E. Reinecke,
American Speech
, Dec., 1940, p. 347.

1
Inside Asia, by John Gunther; New York, 1939, p. 158. Other examples are
Oong, Wong
and
Wen, Chang
and
Jong, Feng
and
Fung
.

2
Dong Kingman
, the San Francisco water-colorist, is commonly called
Kingman
, but his surname is actually
Dong
. The
Kingman
, which is his given-name, represents two Chinese words –
king
, meaning scenery, and
man
, meaning literature or grammar. He was born in California in 1911 but was taken to China at the age of five, and remained there until 1929. I am indebted here to Mr.
Dong
himself; private communication, Oct. 16, 1942. According to Gunther, just cited,
Chiang Kai-shek
is called Mr.
Chiang
by his party followers, with
Lao
(old)
Chiang
as an affectionate diminutive. His wife calls him
Kai
.

3
Reinecke, lately cited, p. 348.

4
According to Arthur H. Smith, in Village Life in China; New York, 1899, p. 253, Chinese at home who are adopted into a family bearing a different surname often take that surname. But adoption is rare among Chinese immigrants. See also Reinecke’s Additional Notes on Personal Names in Hawaii,
American Speech
, Feb., 1943, pp. 69–70.

5
A scheme of transliteration devised by James C. Hepburn (1815–1911), ar American medical missionary who made the first translation of the Bible into Japanese. His Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary; Tokyo, 1867, remained a standard work for many years.

1
Lafcadio Hearn’s children by his Japanese wife adopted Japanese names. His second son, known as
Iwao Inagaki
, became a teacher of English. The Japanese
John Smith
, according to the Associated Press correspondent in Tokyo, writing on Oct. 2, 1938, is
Taro Sazuki
, but according to Ray Cromley, correspondent of the
Wall Street Journal
, Dec. 20, 1946, p. 1, he is
Taro Tanaka
.

2
I take these from a petition submitted to Congress in 1946 (
Congressional Record
, July 19, p. A4506) by the Oglala Sioux of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Not a few of the surnames appended to this petition were non-English,
e.g., Cassidy, Shangreau, Condelario, Dubray, Lamont, Bissonette, Colhoff
and
Romero
.

3
Congressional Record
, April 2, 1946, pp. A1953–54.

4
Carlisle (Pa.), 1914. The school was housed in buildings belonging to the War Department. They were repossessed in 1918 for use as a hospital and rehabilitation center, and the school shut down. Founded in 1879, it never realized its objectives, and has not been revived. Its male students made something of a splash in athletics, especially football and running, but none of its graduates ever attained to any genuine distinction.

5
Nov., p. 716.

1
Eastman, himself the son of a full-blooded Santee-Sioux and a half-bred Sioux woman, was born in 1858. He became a homeopathic doctor and held various posts in the Indian Service. The later years of his life were spent in delivering lectures and writing books.

2
I am indebted here and for part of what follows to Indian Personal Names From the Nebraska and Dakota Regions, by Margaret Cannell,
American Speech
, Oct., 1935, pp. 184–87.

1
Mr. Willard W. Beatty, director of education of the Office of Indian Affairs, tells me that sometimes an Indian word that was merely descriptive was mistaken for a surname and applied to an Indian without change. Thus many Navahos came to be called
Yazzi
, which means little, or
Begay
, which means son. Very often the same designation was translated differently by different government agents. Thus the name which appears as
Stand-for-them
on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota is rendered
Defender
on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.

2
On July 17, 1937, the United Press correspondent at Watonga (Okla.) reported the marriage of Emma
Standing Elk
, described as “a pretty 18-year-old Montana Cheyenne princess,” to Horace
Howling Water
. Among the spectators at the ringside were Jane
Walking Coyote
, Louise
Long Bear
, Mollie
White Bird
, Eva
Old Crow
, Hugh
Yellow Man
, Rose
Shoulder Blade
and James
Night Walker
. I am indebted here to Dr. Claude M. Simpson, Jr., of the University of Wisconsin. Mr. Bruce Nelson, of Bismarck, N. D., reports finding a Montgomery Ward
Two Bellies
in Montana; private communication, Jan. 4, 1946.

3
American Indian Tribal Names, by Maurice G. Smith,
American Speech
, Feb., 1930, pp. 114–17.

4
Indian Words, Personal Names and Place-Names in New Jersey,
American Anthropologist
, Jan.-March, 1902, pp. 183
ff
.

5
Notes on the Kekchi Language, by Robert Burkitt,
American Anthropologist
, July-Sept., 1902, pp. 441
ff
.

6
The Family Names of American Negroes,
American Speech
, Oct., 1939, pp. 163–74, and How We Got Our Surnames, the same, Oct., 1938, pp. 48–53.

7
Names of American Negro Slaves, in Studies in the Science of Society Presented to Albert Galloway Keller; New Haven, 1937, pp. 471–94.

8
Dr. Turner’s studies are still unfinished, but I have had access to them through his courtesy. They are summarized in The Myth of the Negro Past, by Melville J. Herskovits; New York, 1941.

1
The
Amsterdam News
reported on Feb. 1, 1944, p. 2-A, that a Negro Coast Guardsman named George Jack
Goldstein
was visiting in Harlem. He was born in New York City.

2
In a letter from Francis Scott Key to Benjamin Tappan, dated Washington, Oct., 1838, and published in Notes on the United States of America During a Phrenological Visit in 1838–39-40, by George Combs; Philadelphia, 1841, Vol. II, p. 361, there is mention of “a gentleman in Maryland, upwards of thirty years ago, who emancipated by his will between two and three hundred Negroes,” and the statement is made that “they all took (as they were required to do) his name.” There was no such requirement in the Maryland law, but the testator may have imposed it upon his beneficiaries.

3
Booker T.
Washington
says in Up From Slavery; New York, 1900, pp. 34–35, that his slave mother called him
Booker Taliaferro
, but that he grew up knowing only that he was
Booker
. When he went to school and discovered that surnames were necessary he added
Washington
. Later, informed of the
Taliaferro
, he made it his middle name and reduced it to its initial. He was born
c
. 1858–59. Of his father he says: “I have heard reports that he was a white man on a nearby plantation.”

4
Barker, lately cited, p. 168.

1
I am indebted here to Dr. J. D. Bowles, acting dean of the Houston College for Negroes, Houston, Texas; private communication, May 10, 1940.

2
The Rev. Ben Hamilton, formerly in the Liberian consular service and now a missionary in French Equatorial Africa, tells me that many of the civilized natives of Liberia adopt Christian given-names but preserve their tribal surnames,
e.g
., Isaac
Twe
and Robert
Okai
. Others preserve their full tribal names,
e.g., Abayomi Karnge
(justice of the Liberian Supreme Court) and
Momulu Massaquoi
(formerly consul-general at Hamburg). Sometimes, when American surnames are adopted, native names are retained as middle names,
e.g
., Nathaniel H.
Sie
Brownell (professor of mathematics at Liberia College), or the new names are joined to the old ones by hyphens,
e.g
., T. E.
Kla
-Williams (editor of the
Liberian Patriot
). Descendants in the male line of American Negro settlers retain, of course, their family names. J. S. Smith reported in the
Pylon
, April, 1939, that the natives of other parts of West Africa sometimes translate their original names into English,
e.g., Fineboy, Alligator, Strongface
and
Cookey
. The followers of Father Divine in New York, both blacks and whites, abandon their lawful names on conversion, and adopt new names which indicate their semi-celestial status,
e.g., Glorious Illumination, Crystal Star, Flying Angel, Quiet Love
and
Daniel Conqueror
. I am indebted here to The Psychology of Social Movements, by Hadley Cantril; New York, 1941, p. 128, and to Roman Influence,
Converted Catholic
, Nov., 1941, p. 240.

3
This book was made up in part of selections from his Britannia, published in Latin in 1586 but not translated into English until 1610.

1
I am indebted for this one to Dr. C. C. Branson, of Brown University.