Last Names (Mer de Noms)

[Aesculapius]

The origin of last names has been an interest of mine recently. Last names answer questions, such as: 'Who is / was the person's father?', 'What does this person do for a living?', 'Who is / was this person's grandfather?', 'What individual traits or skills does this person exhibit?'.


My last name is Ellis.

English and Welsh: from the medieval personal name Elis, a vernacular form of Elijah (see Elias). In Wales this surname absorbed forms derived from the Welsh personal name Elisedd, a derivative of elus ‘kindly’, ‘benevolent’.

ObELISon.

[Brice]

Cool idea Will! I'll look and see what I can find for you on mine.

[Aesculapius]

Thank ya.



Did anyone watch 'Eli St0ne' that came on after 'Lost' last week?


EDIT:

Elis' tone.

[Brice]

beede
Variant spelling of English Beed.

beed
English: from the Old English personal name Beda, of which the most famous bearer was the Venerable Bede, the 8th century theologian and historian. Use of the personal name, though rare, continued long enough into the medieval period to give rise to the surname.

[Aesculapius]

Interesting. Sounds like a profession or a trait.

[Brice]

Honestly, I am not sure. I know very little of my father's side of the family. I know a bit more about my mother's side.

[Aesculapius]

I believe that the subliminal force is quite powerful. For example, I started a myspace page a while ago to display my artwork. I chose the name Aesculapius for a number of reasons, but, myspace allows you to name the actual url to your page. So, for reasons other than my last name, I chose to use: myspace.com/obelison.

Odd.

Also, I once shook a man's hand and he immediately winced (definitely not because I have too firm of a handshake), and said "I must be getting old."

[Ruthful]

"Pear tree."

Old English-->French

Also Irish, IIRC.

My paternal side of the family, which came from England, N. Ireland and Cork, Galway, etc...

[CPU]

There are several spellings of my family name;

Pontius, Pontious, Punches, Pontzius, Poncy, Pountious. Though these are the most common there are at least 20 spellings of the surname. About 70% of the Americans and 100% of the Germans use Pontius.

PONTIUS: "Seaman." Roman biblical name of a governor of Judea, derived ultimately from the Greek word pontos, meaning "sea."

And hey, the most famous Pontius is Pilate:

Pontius, indicates that he was of the tribe of Pontii. It was one of the most famous of the ancient Samnite names. The surname or cognomen Pilatus indicates the familia, or branch of the gens Pontius. The name is uncertain, though some think it may have meant "armed with the pilum" (a spear or javelin). One interesting note is about another man in Roman history bearing the name. Lucius Pontius Aquila was a friend of Cicero and one of the assassins of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March (44 BC) when the would-be king was murdered.

I've also found during some research that a Pontius ancestor was friends with William the Conqueror and was granted title and land during his campaign against the English.

[Erin]

My last name is Kelley.

The name Kelly is etymologically Irish in origin, and is the 2nd most common family name in Ireland (after Murphy). It has also become a first name (originally for males, then expanded to females). Variants of the name include Kellyn, Kelley, Kelli, Kellye, Kellie, Kelle, Kellog, McCullough, and Cheallaigh (as a female surname, for example: Ní Cheallaigh). It is most commonly an Anglicisation of the Gaelic clan name of Ó Ceallaigh, which means grandchild or descendant of Ceallach. The word Ceallach itself means contentious, which has been adapted by recruiting sergeants to mean "Brave Warrior" in many English-speaking armies (such as that of the Irish Army, British Army, and Australian Army), and by American popular culture to mean "Warrior Princess". The spelling "Kelley" is often associated with pre-famine largely Protestant emigrants, though the clerks at Ellis Island spelled it more than one way.

I'm going to start calling myself Erin Warrior Princess

*edit* Oh and Corey, that is so awesome about a Pontius being one of Caeser's assissans.

[ATG]

Barlow

The boy's name Barlow \b(a)-rlow, bar-low\ is of Old English origin, and its meaning is "the bare hillside". Place name. Joel Barlow was an early American statesman.

[jayson]

Barlow

The boy's name Barlow b(a)-rlow, bar-low is of Old English origin, and its meaning is "the bare hillside". Place name. Joel Barlow was an early American statesman.

and of course there is Barlow the vampire in Salem's Lot.

so here is mine...

from wikipedia...

Jews took the name Kaplan, particularly in Eastern Europe, as a vernacular equivalent of the name Cohen[citation needed]. In Polish, for example, the term "kaplan" (spelled Kapłan) translates as "priest"[1], which is equivalent to the English translation for the Hebrew word "Cohen". It is therefore suggested that Kaplan is one of the oldest European/Middle Eastern surnames still in use today as those who have the name Kaplan are considered to be the descendants of the high priests of Jewish biblical times.

...

The name "Kaplan" is an English transliteration. There are alternative spellings. Some are: Caplan, Caplin, Koplen, Koplin, Copland, and Chaplain. There are others.
In the United States, immigrants of Jewish origin arriving at the port of Baltimore received a "C" - Caplan, whereas those who arrived at the port of New York City (Ellis Island), received a "K" - Kaplan[4].

My people came through NY, so mine is a K.

[Sai Joshua]

Mine is Kirkland. It is pretty straightforward. It is a Scottish name which means "keeper/defender of the church lands" apparently one of my anscestors was in charge of the church grounds and that is where the name came from.

[Mattrick]

Not sure about what my name means or anything. Personally, I don't see how names can have an applicable meaning.

What I do know is that I learned that my family is in the line of the great explorer David Livingstone. The name has been in my family for a long time. My grandfather had it, my uncle had it and now my cousin has it.

[LadyHitchhiker]

My married last name means:

Definition: 1) One who was black haired or dark complexioned. 2) A cloth dyer who specialized in black dyes.

Surname Origin: English

And my maiden name means:

Definition: Derived from the Old English word "geong," meaning"young," this surname was used as a descriptive name to distinguish father from son or to the younger of two relatives with the same first name (similar to the usage of Junior).

Surname Origin: English


So together I'm a

Young Dyer.

If we throw in my first and second name it is...
"Consecrated By God Pure Young Dyer."

[Daghain]

Maiden name:

Martin: (Origin English, Scottish, Irish, French, Dutch, German, Czech, Slovak, Spanish ) This name may be derived from the Latin martius, warlike, from Mars, the God of War. In the Gaelic, mor is great, and duin, a man. Morduin, a chief, a warrior.

Married name:

Sellers:

You may be surprised by the likely source of your last name. Sellers is an English and/or Scottish surname, and the -s on the end suggests that it is patronymic (Greek patro- "father" and nym "name"), meaning that it is derived from the given name of a father or ancestor. For example, the son of a man named Roger might be called John Rogers, the -s suggesting possession, with "son" implied, that is, John Rogers is really "John Roger's son". So Sellers suggests that the name started with someone named Seller. What does Seller mean? Interestingly, a seller was a saddler, or a maker of saddles for horses. It comes from Anglo Norman seller, which derives from Old French sellier. That came from Latin sellarius, "saddle maker", from sella "seat, saddle", and ultimately from sedere "to sit" (source of, among others, English sedentary).

Without the final -s, your surname could be topographic in origin, referring to someone who lived in an animal hut (a selle (Middle English)), or it could be occupational, referring to someone who worked in the cellar of a large house or even a monastery. Finally, it could refer to a merchant (one who sells).

[Letti]

My lastname is Szűcs. It means Furrier, the one who makes fur coats... it's a very popular last name here.

[Jean]

Barlow

The boy's name Barlow b(a)-rlow, bar-low is of Old English origin, and its meaning is "the bare hillside". Place name. Joel Barlow was an early American statesman.

and of course there is Barlow the vampire in Salem's Lot.

The first that came to my mind - even before Barlow the vampire (maybe because I read Tom Sawyer so much earlier) was this:
"Mary gave him a bran-new "Barlow" knife worth twelve and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur in that - though where the Western boys ever got the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury, is an imposing mystery and will always remain so, perhaps."

Jayson: Fanny Kaplan was the woman who once tried to assassinate Lenin. Alas, she failed.

[jayson]

The first that came to my mind - even before Barlow the vampire (maybe because I read Tom Sawyer so much earlier) was this:
"Mary gave him a bran-new "Barlow" knife worth twelve and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur in that - though where the Western boys ever got the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its injury, is an imposing mystery and will always remain so, perhaps."

Prob bc I've recently re-read Wolves and Callahan is still fresh in mind., but yes, that is another literary Barlow in Twain.

Jayson: Fanny Kaplan was the woman who once tried to assassinate Lenin. Alas, she failed.

She must have aimed with her eye and forogtten the face of her father.

[CPU]

My last name is Kelley.

The name Kelly is etymologically Irish in origin, and is the 2nd most common family name in Ireland (after Murphy). It has also become a first name (originally for males, then expanded to females). Variants of the name include Kellyn, Kelley, Kelli, Kellye, Kellie, Kelle, Kellog, McCullough, and Cheallaigh (as a female surname, for example: Ní Cheallaigh). It is most commonly an Anglicisation of the Gaelic clan name of Ó Ceallaigh, which means grandchild or descendant of Ceallach. The word Ceallach itself means contentious, which has been adapted by recruiting sergeants to mean "Brave Warrior" in many English-speaking armies (such as that of the Irish Army, British Army, and Australian Army), and by American popular culture to mean "Warrior Princess". The spelling "Kelley" is often associated with pre-famine largely Protestant emigrants, though the clerks at Ellis Island spelled it more than one way.

I'm going to start calling myself Erin Warrior Princess

*edit* Oh and Corey, that is so awesome about a Pontius being one of Caeser's assissans.

Thanks, Erin, Warrior Princess

[Aesculapius]