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From:
Subject: Versions of Names
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 20:15:52 EST
Dear O-Ray-of-Light-from-Above: How's that one?
I have a friend whose surname is Columbus - changed from Columbe - sounds
reasonable. But Columbe was born Heisenfeld! Might have something to do with
his theft of 20 horses from Germany which he took to Switzerland - then settled
in somewhere around Italy and began making wooden columns for a living, hence
Columbe.
I've seen parents give their kids awful names, and my parents are in that
category - because they liked to be different. The alternative to such wild
freedoms are those ethnic European names which had a pretty short list - one was
(and still is) not permitted to deviate too much. The French and German
people (Polish too, right?) are very proprietary about their languages, and that
extends to names; they must show their ethnicity and they must clearly show
whether male or female. And then they abbreviate them. I have a page somewhere
with something like 25 or 30 different versions of Wilhelm.
Then you have people who moved under cover of darkness and "Frenchified" or
"Italianized" or otherwise disguised their names, Johann Waldeman to Jean
DuBois to Jack Woods - coming to the USA and making carpenters out of
Zimmerman/Timmerman and Little or Short out of Klein/Kline/Cline and Ethel Merman out of
Ethel Zimmerman, and Chopin - whose father was French, mother was Justine
Krzyzanowska. Then you have Roosevelt Raspberry Jones. He was distinctly
non-European though!
I do believe these names in all their evolutions are an integral part of our
genealogies. And who said we can't have any fun doing this? I would love to
have met James' Aunt Jim! I'll bet she bobbed her hair, too.
T. Maureen Schoenky
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