Re: [OT] Family names (Wieser)

From: Beth (BethStone21_at_hotmail.NOSPICEDHAM.com)
Date: 02/18/04 

Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 03:24:02 -0000

Alex McDonald wrote:
> Beth wrote:
> > T.M. Sommers wrote:
> > > Beth wrote:
> > > > Also, names like "McDonald" actually means "son of Donald"
> > (Scottish
> > > > way)
> > >
> > > The 'Scottish way' is 'MacDonald'.
> >
> > As a McDonald themselves has now told you, this is merely a
spelling
> > alternative (remembering that, at this time, there was no
"standard"
> > spellings...like Shakespeare's "MacBeth" (oh dear, Wannabee's
going to
> > find that funny...I can tell ;) yet Mr.Shaekspeer himself spelt
his
> > own name in dozens of different ways :)...
> >
> > But it is a common "urban myth" that "Mc" is Irish and "Mac" is
> > Scottish, which isn't actually true...just spelling variations of
the
> > same thing...note, also, that in the original Scottish Gaelic the
"c"
> > sound is actually like "ch" in "loch" or German "Ach" (a throaty
sound
> > :)...the Welsh and Irish (and the Scots but not so much) still
keep
> > their Celtic tongues alive and it's interesting to compare that
the
> > Welsh word for "son" is "mab", which is close to "mac"...though
the
> > languages have separated out over time, there's still many words
> > similar and common between them (such as the one mentioned
below)...
>
> Beth, please stop speculating! Mc/Mac is pronounced with a hard K
> sound, not "-ch" as in loch. Otherwise it would be spelled Mach or
> Magh; spelling in Gaelic is pretty tortuous, but very rigorous as to
> the sounds produced.

Hey, maybe my source was wrong here, but it was not "speculation"...I
looked it up...it has the following to say about Scottish
pronounciation:

"c ~ at start of word, as 'c' in English cup; elsewhere, like 'chk' in
Loch Katrine ~ cù; aca"
[ from http://www.crosswinds.net/~daire/names/frames/notes.html ]

As it's not at the start of the word, then according to this, it
should be "ch"-like...if this is wrong then I apologise, I was merely
following what this said...but it wasn't "speculation" because I did
go to the effort of looking it up...but, if you're right, then I've
simply looked up a site with inaccurate information, then...sorry
about that...

> ==snipped
> > and, certainly, the old Celtic languages were
> > "Romanised" when Britain was conquered by the Romans...so, one
wonders
> > how much is actually "original" and how much came about through
> > "influence"...
>
> Welsh and Gaelic are two variants of root Celtic language that split
> around 700-800 BC. Welsh was most influenced by Germanic invasions
of
> the 500-600 AD. The main split between Irish and Scottish Gaelic was
> around the time of the Norse invasions of Scotland, around the
1300AD.
> To paraphrase Monty Python; "What did the Romans ever do for us?"
> Nothing. The Romans did not get far into present day Wales, nor
> Scotland; and as far as I know, they never settled anywhere in
> Ireland.

Yeah, that's the _people_ and the _armies_...

But _languages_ do not always respect borders in quite the same
way...the Welsh, for example, _never_ conquered England but yet we
have words like "corgi" (the "gi" is a transmutation* of "ci", the
Welsh word for dog) and Linux users might be interested to know that
"penguin" comes from Welsh "Pen-gwyn", which literally means "white
head" (a reference, one assumes, to their funny black and white
apperance :)...also attributed to Welsh are the words "clutter",
"crowd", "crumpet", "flannel", "flimsy", "javelin" and "maggot"...when
did the Welsh armies storm into England and force the English to use
these words? Exactly...never happened...language _only_ requires
"close proximity" and people crossing the borders in both directions
for things to gradually "merge" and words to get "borrowed" here and
there...

It doesn't take an army to conquer a country for language to spread
and influence each other...in fact, the "flak" thread elsewhere shows
another example...did Germany conquer English after this word was
invented? Nope...it was "borrowed"...Germans say "computer" usually,
even though there's a German word - "rechner" - for computers...

To give you an even better idea of what I mean, just look at the list
here:

http://www.krysstal.com/borrow.html

...and then tell me the date when the Yoruba people of Nigeria
conquered England!! ;)

[ * Please don't make me explain this, it's a very weird Welsh thing
where the first letter of a word can actually "transmute" into
different letters according to context...for example, "merch" is the
Welsh word for "girl" but it can also be "ferch" (the "m" changing to
an "f") in certain contexts...the first letter, in fact, can entirely
disappear in one context...this makes looking up words you hear spoken
in a dictionary slightly on the complex side because the dictionary
merely lists the words "un-transmutated" and relies on the reader to
know the rules - which, thankfully, are completely regular - to know
how to change it back to find the word in the dictionary ;) ]

> > which isn't a strange idea at all because guess what
> > we're speaking when we're speaking English? Basically, an _entire
> > language_ that was born that way...a mish-mash patchwork quilt of
a
> > language that came about as a "common tongue" between all the
> > different peoples of Britain at the time, who all spoke different
> > things: Anglo-Saxons with a Germanic edge, French was there, some
> > Viking stuff, the Celts (and though the Celts of Britain like to
> > sometimes think they were the "originals" on this small island,
they
> > were _invaders_ too...just the oldest ones we actually know
anything
> > about...
>
> Not including the Picts, of course... You're woefully missing the
mark
> on this subject.

Woefully? Nah, you're just trying to "pull rank" to look clever...just
because I didn't mention the Picts in the brief thing I wrote above
doesn't mean they weren't there, of course...I do Hope this isn't
anti-English sentiment or anything because I think that I was more
than fair in my representations (even to the degree of not being
particularly kind to my own nationality there)...but, yeah, I know:
"how dare the English talk about 'us' like that?"...blah-blah-blah...

Beth :)

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