Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bluelake]

[Countrygirl]

My name is Dutch and means "nun's house". I worked with another Dutchie and he refused to tell me what his name stood for. Turns out his name meant "outhouse".

This is not about surnames, but my dad and his brothers and his father all have the name John. "John (father); John XXX; XXX John; XXX John". So close to being white trash it's scary.

[Kikomom]

My grandfather was John. That's what it got changed to from Ivan at Ellis Island. He only named one son John though.

I'm guessing, Countrygirl, that one of your uncles is John Boy?

My surname (ex's) originated in Sicily, but it gets mistaken for Mexican alot. Mainly because Pancho made it famous.

[SeoulShakin]

This is what I found via google -

"An abbreviation of courteous. It may be from Curthose, a name given for wearing short hose, as the name Curtmantle was given to Henry the Second of England, from his introducing the fashion of wearing shorter mantles than had been previously used."

[ddeubel]

My last name is German but comes from when the Austrian Hungarian Empire needed $$$ and Franz Josef demanded all Jews go to the center of town/village and be registered for taxation.

Jews didn't have last names (in the formal sense) so if you had money to bribe, you got what the local official thought was a good name - Bloomberg, Miller, Goldberg. If you had zilch like my forefathers, you got a dastardly name.

My name means "Devil's Bite". Also of note - Ostertag (Easter Day - not really a nice one for a Jew ) Greenspan / spoon (the poison used to kill in those days, from when a silver spoon is left in mayonnaise) and Streisand - German for the fine hairs on a horse's arse end. Interesting bit of etymology.

So that's my story. Also, my last name is very uncommon but unfortunately for me, I get lots of stares and questions from customs officials in Switzerland when I return. One of our "clan" was the only known Swiss bank robber/mass murderer, quite a rare thing in Switzerland......

DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

[it's full of stars]

Comes from the Irish meaning fire, and from the Druidic tradition of spirit worship. (Other meanings exist but will not be gone into here )

There was a migration, in 1100AD, when people with the same name moved to Scotland. And evidence that a prior colonisation of Scotland happened in 503AD with other members of the clan moving to the Highlands.

Some of the clans changed from the typical, Irish-Catholic to Scots-Protestant, and as such fought on either side of the Battle of the Boyne.

This tradition of impartiality was continued by clan members fighting on both sides of the American Revolutionary war. The first person bearing my Surname entered Virginia in 1652. There are (at least) 2 American cities with my family name.

It is most common in Northern Ireland, where I come from, and Scotland, and there are at least 4 variations of the English spelling of the name. I used the word clan to identify people with the same name, I don't talk about clans when I'm on the phone asking mum how the family is.

I won't explain the idea of Milesian Irish, but you should wiki' and google it. There are claims that the name may come from as far back as those times, 700BC, perhaps earlier. So it may come from the Iberian invaders of Ireland who fought and conquered the earliest known people of the island.

Some interesting stuff about the British and Irish genepool, that corroborates the Basque and Northern Spain (Milesian) origin theory.

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7817

[krats1976]

My surname is a German word, but comes from Scotland. As the story goes, a long-ago Scottish ancestor saved the King of England from a raging bull. He was knighted "Sir Stark"... Stark meaning "strong" in German or (according to something I just found online) "resolute" in Old English.