Re: Dutch surnames (scatological warning!)

2009/4/7 Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>

>
>> My husband always says that when completely translated
>> into French, his full name sounds quite noble (as long as
>> you don't know French :) ). Of course, in French he makes
>> it Jean Henry Marie Pied de la Vache-Grandsire (mine would be Christophe
>> Alain Grandsire-Pied de la Vache). I
>> personally prefer to keep to the original version :) .
>>
>
> This reminds me of the old French fashion
> of using the naming format
>
> _<first name> <father's surname> de <mother's surname>_.
>
> I guess this was a quasi-legitimate way of making a
> bourgeois name sound 'noble' by getting a _de_ into
> it.  It is of course also reminicent of the Hispano-
> phone formats
>
The other way was to simply buy a title (quite common after the Restoration,
given how many noble families had lost their heads ;) ). One of the former
French presidents, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, was well known for having such
a bought-out noble name (his grandfather bought the name "d'Estaing", along
with the nobility title).


>
> What I wonder is how common this format was in France,
> and how long it was in use.  I'm quite sure the _terminus
> ante quem_ was 1789, but when did it begin?
>
No idea.


>
> FWIW _kofot_ is only 'crowbar' in Swedish.  The hoof
> of a cow is _klöv_, which is an ablaut derivation of
> _clave[^1]_.  Christophe's surname sounds like the
> nickname of the patriarch of a fairy-tale robber band!

Doesn't sound half bad! <mischievious grin>


>
> (And of course St. Christopher was originally a robber!! :-)
>
Was he? I don't know much about my patron saint, although if he is indeed a
kind of christianisation of the Greco-Roman god of traveling
Hermes/Mercurius, as I've often pondered, it doesn't surprise me that the
protector of travelers would have been a robber as well :) .


>
> BTW how would you translate _arrêter_ in my sig?
>
> /BP 8^)>
> --
> Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>  "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
>  à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
>  ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
>  c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)
>
"s'arrêter" (the verb is pronominal) usually means "to stop (moving)". It
presupposes a kind of process, usually a movement (although it can also be a
transformation or evolution) that the subject of it stops doing. Unlike
"arrêter", which is a general "to stop", and like the English verb can be
transitive or intransitive, "s'arrêter" is intransitive (actually
pronominal) and restricted to the idea of stopping a movement or
transformation.
-- 
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.

http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/