Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Vijay]

FWIR the first British settlers were disproportionately wealthy (and nearly starved to death because they didn't know how to farm), so maybe that's also reflected in the distribution of surnames here in the US.

[Salmoneus]

FWIR the first British settlers were disproportionately wealthy (and nearly starved to death because they didn't know how to farm), so maybe that's also reflected in the distribution of surnames here in the US.

I'm skeptical both of their great wealth and of their inability to either farm, or employ someone who knew how to farm, or to read a book on farming. These may have been true of specific expeditions, but I doubt it was true of the colonisation (and later mass-migration) in general. [I'm not even sure it's fair to say this of Jamestown - apparently the site was poor for agriculture, and there was a many-year drought, so the effeteness of the English needn't really be relied on to explain their food shortages]

In any case, I think it's notable that wealthy British surnames - i.e. the Norman families - are relatively absent from the US.


In terms of differences in percentages, as well as the points already made, I'd say:
- the English migrants weren't all drawn equally from across England (early settlement was strongly associated with Bristol and the west country, for a start), so the naming proportions wouldn't be the same
- there would have been strong founder effects - the rapid population growth from a small founding population would lead to the disproportionate preponderance of some names and the absence of others.


All that said, I'm curious which "stereotypically British" names you're thinking of. American and English names seem pretty similar to me, with the major difference being the absence or relative rarity in England of some American names (typically immigrant names and those given to slaves).

[Pabappa]

Some that I've noticed are Postlethwaite and Sleep. Sleep is just a rare name to begin with, but Postlethwaite may just be a family whose members never moved to the U.S.

[dhok]

FWIR the first British settlers were disproportionately wealthy (and nearly starved to death because they didn't know how to farm), so maybe that's also reflected in the distribution of surnames here in the US.

I'm skeptical both of their great wealth and of their inability to either farm, or employ someone who knew how to farm, or to read a book on farming. These may have been true of specific expeditions, but I doubt it was true of the colonisation (and later mass-migration) in general. [I'm not even sure it's fair to say this of Jamestown - apparently the site was poor for agriculture, and there was a many-year drought, so the effeteness of the English needn't really be relied on to explain their food shortages]

In any case, I think it's notable that wealthy British surnames - i.e. the Norman families - are relatively absent from the US.


In terms of differences in percentages, as well as the points already made, I'd say:
- the English migrants weren't all drawn equally from across England (early settlement was strongly associated with Bristol and the west country, for a start), so the naming proportions wouldn't be the same
- there would have been strong founder effects - the rapid population growth from a small founding population would lead to the disproportionate preponderance of some names and the absence of others.


All that said, I'm curious which "stereotypically British" names you're thinking of. American and English names seem pretty similar to me, with the major difference being the absence or relative rarity in England of some American names (typically immigrant names and those given to slaves).

For first names, there are some clear cultural differences--Oliver, Nigel, Alfred/Alfie and Harold all seem to be relatively common in Britain but are very rare to nonexistent in the States.

[Salmoneus]

For first names, there are some clear cultural differences--Oliver, Nigel, Alfred/Alfie and Harold all seem to be relatively common in Britain but are very rare to nonexistent in the States.

First names are very different - they change each generation, so can very easily diverge between areas, as well as changing radically from decade to decade ('Nigel' was very common a couple of generations ago, but is now I would suspect extremely rare - it's a name that's a figure of fun - while 'Alfie' was rare for most of the 20th century but has made a huge comeback). In particular, in many ways the UK can be considered a more affluent, hipster-y, fashionable part of the US (more beards, 'grandad' collars, more babies called 'Alfie', etc), so it's likely to be more like (white parts of) New York or Los Angeles than like the US as a whole, in terms of names and other fashions.

However, some of your perceptions may be worth reconsidering. Looking those names up...

Oliver is indeed the most common boy's name in the UK. But it's also the fifth-most common boy's name in the US! [popular current US TV character called 'Oliver': Oliver Queen, of Arrow]

Nigel is not in the top 1000 boy's names in the US at the moment, although Kalel is, as is (shockingly high) Crew. (and somehow Brayden and Maverick are in your top 100!?). [and "Xzavier" is in the top 1000...] But then, Nigel is not in the top 1000 boy's names in the UK either. In fact, it appeared in the top 10 between the late 1940s and early 1970s, and has never been seen before or since. "Zephyr" is in the top 1000. So's Tyrese, and Ryker with a Y. (Rhyley with an h, a y, and an e was on the list in 2011, but has since fallen off - likewise "Shawn" with a W). But not Nigel.

(what this means in practice is that we're running at somewhere under 30 Nigels per year)


Alfred dropped out of the UK top 100 around 1945. It's currently #107. Alfie, on the other hand, suddenly appeared in the late 1990s, and shot up to #4, but is now back down to #12. (Alfie-James is also on the list, though Alfie-Lee has dropped off). In the US, Alfred is #872, and Alfie is indeed outside the top 1000, so OK, this is a good example of your point.


Harold dropped out of the top 100 in the UK around 1945 (it was popular around the turn of the century). Oddly, it's not made a comeback yet, although it's the sort of name you'd think might ("Edith" is making a comeback, for instance). It's currently #906 - 34 Harolds were born in 2017. It's actually MORE popular in the US (#797) than in the US. [popular recent US TV character called 'Harold': Harold Finch, of Person of Interest]


Of course, we also have "Harry", but that's a separate name, not (usually) an abbreviation of Harold (in fact traditionally it's the diminutive for "Henry") - and was itself not that common for boys until the current prince got popular.

[Linguoboy]

So just to illustrate what I was saying, here's a comparison of the ten most common surnames in England and the ten most common in the USA:

England

1. Smith
2. Jones
3. Taylor
4. Brown
5. Williams
6. Wilson
7. Johnson
8. Davies
9. Robinson
10. Wright

USA

1. Smith
2. Johnson
3. Williams
4. Brown
5. Jones
6. Miller
7. Davis
8. Garcia
9. Rodriguez
10. Wilson

Overall, very similar. The only English names absent from the US list (and their US rank) are: Davies (-), Taylor (13), Robinson (27), and Wright (34). The absence of Davies in the USA is explained by regularisation: /ˈdeɪvɪs/ is the traditional UK pronunciation, so Davis represents a phonetic respelling. (In the USA, Davies is typically pronounced /ˈdeɪviːz/ to rhyme with navies.) Taylor is just off the list, displaced by Miller, Garcia, and Rodriguez. I don't have a pat explanation for why Robinson and Wright aren't more popular, though it could have to do with some of the founder effects or questions of geographical distribution others have mentioned.

As for the US list, Garcia is the second most common surname in Mexico and Rodriguez is 6th. Miller owes its popularity to German immigrants, who commonly switched to it from Müller (pronounced with /ɪ/ rather than /ʏ/ by the many, many speakers of non-standard varieties with Entrundung). Similarly, Johnson received a boost from Scandinavians. (Johansson is the second most common surname in both Sweden and Norway.) Nearly half (47%) of the bearers of the name Williams are Black, which suggests to me that it was commonly adopted by freed slaves. Since I can't think of any political figure who would have inspired its adoption, I assume it's the name of one or more prominent plantation owners in the South(strange as it may seem to us, freed slaves often took the surnames of their former owners), which once again could be attributed to founder effects.

[Vijay]

I had a classmate named Nigel once.

[Zaarin]

Rhyley with an h, a y, and an e was on the list in 2011

That is abhorrent. Reminds me of an acquaintance I once knew named Jhynifer or something to that effect. (Hint: if you have to invent an exotic spelling of a common name, maybe you should just--and hear me out on this--pick a less common name? )

[Linguoboy]

"SanDeE*"

[Travis B.]

I would not be surprised either if Smith got a boost from German Schmidt/Schmid as well.

[Linguoboy]

I would not be surprised either if Smith got a boost from German Schmidt/Schmid as well.

Same. Whereas the nearest German equivalent to Taylor, namely Schneider, lacks an obvious English cognate. Same goes for equivalents of Wright.

[Travis B.]

Now that I think of it, couldn't there also be Browns descended from Germans with the surname Braun?

[dhok]

I recall reading at some point that Miller is an uncommon surname in Britain because the stereotype of millers was that they cheated peasants on their grain take--but the same sterotype did not apply to Germans named Müller, who are ancestral to most Americans named Miller.

[Pabappa]

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/clerc#Old_French
Is Latin -ic>French -c attested elsewhere? Is this word possibly a loan from OE or some other Germanic language instead ?

[zompist]

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/clerc#Old_French
Is Latin -ic>French -c attested elsewhere? Is this word possibly a loan from OE or some other Germanic language instead ?

Yes: parricus > parc.

[Linguoboy]

Apparently "telescopic phrase" isn't a collocation and the consecrated expression is actually "telegraphic phrase". Frankly, "telescopic" makes more sense to me. I imagine taking the full phrase and collapsing it until you're left with only a few prominent elements representing the whole.

[Pabappa]

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/clerc#Old_French
Is Latin -ic>French -c attested elsewhere? Is this word possibly a loan from OE or some other Germanic language instead ?

Yes: parricus > parc.

Okay, thanks, but Im not sure I believe in that either .... it comes from Medieval latin parricus, yes, but this seems to come from an unattested Frankish root, which itself must be a loan from somewhere else since it begins with /p/, and the Germanic languages are known to have compressed all unstressed vowels. There's also a variant Latin form parrucus, apparently.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstr ... c/parrukaz

Note that the original root ends up as /park/ in various Germanic languages without ever detouring through France. i'd think it's at least possible that the various Romance forms are derived from a later stage of this word rather than the original with its /i/.

[MacAnDàil]

Yes, indeed, Germanic languages are known to have compressed all unstressed vowels. And French, as the most heavily Germanic-influenced language among the major Romance languages, has done much the same.

[zompist]

Okay, thanks, but Im not sure I believe in that either .... it comes from Medieval latin parricus, yes, but this seems to come from an unattested Frankish root, which itself must be a loan from somewhere else since it begins with /p/, and the Germanic languages are known to have compressed all unstressed vowels. There's also a variant Latin form parrucus, apparently.

Wiktionary doesn't give times, but Larousse does: parc is cited from 1175,and parricus from the 8th century. It relates this to parra, not barra, FWIW.

[Linguoboy]

Note that the original root ends up as /park/ in various Germanic languages without ever detouring through France.

Which languages are you thinking of besides Dutch? AFAIK, the inherited English form is parrock, with park representing a Gallicism and the same goes for German Pferch vs Park.