ridiculous and weird surname

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Crispy105
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ridiculous and weird surname

Postby Crispy105 » 2012-03-07, 10:07

Hi there. I haven't found such kind of topic among numerous themes here).
The point is that I've got an interesting surname which is said like Zanozina. In Russia it means "splinter". And when i spell it anyway, nobody believes it's real surname. They think I'm kidding. I spend some minutes to prove that it is. It's believed that everybody who has such surname are relatives. The myth of origin is not well known. But the most common is that one groom of Ancient Rusland had this surname. He was hired by our national hero (called boghatyr) Ylia Murometz.
Please, share ridiculous surnames and weird cased connected to it with me.
Thnx

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WallOfStuff
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby WallOfStuff » 2012-03-08, 12:42

My last name is normal, but here are some weird last names I've heard:
Blizzard
Metercut

Ludwig Whitby
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby Ludwig Whitby » 2012-03-08, 14:17

Serbs from the region of Lika in Croatia have weird surnames because they didn't want to comply with the foreign, Austrian authorities and didn't want to give out their real names. The surnames that they got and their descendants carry to this days were most probably originally a prank. Here is a list of them.

Notable examples include:
Bauk - mythical creature
Drakula - Dracula
Gaće - underwear
Šarengaća - one who wears colorful underwear
Guzina - big butt
Noge - legs
Tesla - a tool used for carpentry, looks like this
Torbica - little bag
Vještica - witch

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Hoogstwaarschijnlijk
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby Hoogstwaarschijnlijk » 2012-03-08, 15:05

My surname is really really boring but in the Netherlands there's this story that some people made up very weird names when they were obliged by Napoleon to have a surname, names like Naaktgeboren (born naked) for instance, this is a myth however: http://www.naamkunde.net/?page_id=162
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Corrections appreciated.

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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby WallOfStuff » 2012-03-09, 11:39

Oh yeah, I forgot the name Griffin, which is actually pretty common but is a mythical creature.

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Re: Ridiculous and weird surnames

Postby MillMaths » 2012-03-09, 15:17

British comedian Alan Davies apparently knew someone with the surname Glasscock or Glascock in his school days. "We had a Jimmy 'Glasscock' at school," he says in an episode of the programme QI. "You could always see when he was coming!" :rotfl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTQTQt6vZ0

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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby Bao » 2012-03-09, 19:11

When I was a teenager I earned some pocketmoney delivering newspapers, and one of the name plates said "Kasemägi-Blau".
It sounds awesome. It sounds like blue cheese. And I really wonder how somebody ended up with an Estonian/German-Jewish double name.
I often confuse 辛 and 幸. || It's not procrastination until the last day.

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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby linguoboy » 2012-03-09, 19:25

Ludwig Whitby wrote:Tesla - a tool used for carpentry, looks like this

I'm not so sure this one is a joke. Metonymic occupational surnames are common enough in Europe, and there are even direct parallels to this one (German Dechsel, Spanish Azuela, French Herminette, etc.), although not in English. (In English, this would be called an "adze". I wouldn't expect the average person to know what one is, but my father used to be a carpenter.)
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby Hunef » 2012-03-10, 0:02

I hate the Swedish surname Sandal which really means and is pronounced like sanddal (stress on the first syllable) 'sand valley' but is spelled like the word sandal (stress on the second syllable) 'sandal', i.e., what you may wear on your feet. OK, not so much a weird surname, just God damn annoying because of where the stress falls when you misinterpret it due to the ridiculous spelling convention. Note that some spell it Sandahl, but the missing d still forces the wrong stress.

    Image
    Jamtish local politician Björn Sandal.

    Image
    Swedish young pretentious author Ronnie Sandahl.

Another annoying surname - but fo a different reason - is Järnkrok which means 'iron hook' which makes me think about the Peter Pan character Captain Hook. I noticed the surname not long ago in the context of ice hockey, there's a young ice hockey player with the name Calle Järnkrook (yeah, officially "Calle", not Carl).

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    Calle Järnkrok?

    Image
    Captain Hook?
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby Spaigelploatje » 2012-03-10, 0:24

Some weird surnames I know in Dutch:
Baksteen = Brick , an example is this guy: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benno_Baksteen
Poepjes = small parts of poo
Slettenhaar = Slut hair

My own surname is so weird that Google+ accepted it only after moderation.. :lol:

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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby JackFrost » 2012-03-10, 1:51

I remember coming across a name "Malépart".

For weeks I spent giggling and joking about it to my friends.

I kept on reading it as "male part".
Neferuj paħujkij!

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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby ILuvEire » 2012-03-10, 5:03

Spaigelploatje wrote:Some weird surnames I know in Dutch:
Baksteen = Brick , an example is this guy: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benno_Baksteen
Poepjes = small parts of poo
Slettenhaar = Slut hair

My own surname is so weird that Google+ accepted it only after moderation.. :lol:
Can we ask what it is? I'm terribly curious, now.

My great-aunt's surname was Boulba. Thank god she joined the Newman clan.
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Lada
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby Lada » 2012-03-10, 9:57

ILuvEire wrote:My great-aunt's surname was Boulba. Thank god she joined the Newman clan.

Бульба [bulʲba] means "potato" in Ukrainian, it's a widespread surname I suppose, used even in classical literature :)
Crispy105 wrote:The point is that I've got an interesting surname which is said like Zanozina. In Russia it means "splinter".

I find it to be very usual, though I guess it was not easy at school with such a surname... "Interesting surnames" I came across:

Конопля/Коноплёв(а) - cannabis
Свинья - pig/swine
Тупиков(а) - puffin (lit.) and in spoken language it means "dumb"
Лобков(а) - pubis (surname of a popular journalist Pavel Lobkov)

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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby Hoogstwaarschijnlijk » 2012-03-10, 11:22

ILuvEire wrote:
Spaigelploatje wrote:Some weird surnames I know in Dutch:
Baksteen = Brick , an example is this guy: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benno_Baksteen
Poepjes = small parts of poo
Slettenhaar = Slut hair

My own surname is so weird that Google+ accepted it only after moderation.. :lol:
Can we ask what it is? I'm terribly curious, now.


Yes, me too, pm please! :D

I know someone whose surname is 'De Man' (the man), which is just weird when you're a girl :P
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Corrections appreciated.

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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby WallOfStuff » 2012-03-10, 14:41

Oh I just remembered some more:
Kill-Marten
Wheresnick
Iameddi
Failer

Sol Invictus
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby Sol Invictus » 2012-03-10, 22:59

Latvians have strange history with surnames - as the story goes, up to 19th century the local peasantry was living happily without surnames (well nott really - they went by their house names) and then a law was made that everyone needs surnames, let corruption, common stupidity and name calling ensue. Although people were encouraged to take Latvian names and technicaly were supposed to choose for themselves, in some cases they chose Germanized and other foreign surnames and in some cases local government didn't really let them choose. So in one case powers that be didn't like some politician of Italian decent and gave everyone Italian sounding surnames, others were just pure rude and still others apparently used people's nicknames, which also weren't always the nicest words, probably most people ended up having their house names anyway. But anyhow when indepence was proclaimed people were allowed to change surnames and at one point encouraged to Latvianize them. I think even today we have a law that lets you change your surname, if you feel it is offending.

Out of few curiosities - in eastern part of Latvia people were named by place they live in (I think they don't have house names, since they live in villages mostly). The place names are rather curious, like my grandmother loves to tell about guy who introduced himself (I'll translate these) as "Peter Dumbass of The big dumbasess" - there are villages of The big and The small dumbasess. Recently one guy from village name of which sounds close, but not exactly, like Latvian for Arse wanted the village renamed (rest of the population was against BTW), there too was an elderly lady with respective surname. Also a magazine I read runs column on curious people, they had a story on Mis Stearingwheel who became Misis Brake, but now has adopted double surname and goes by Stearingwheel-Brake.

But anyways here are some more fun names I found:
God's child
Mischief
Death
Crazy
Tearworm
Lamb of mouses
Pig song
Flea of the waley (and a lot of other unflatering/animal names)

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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby ILuvEire » 2012-03-11, 9:52

Bahah, that's funny.

There's always the oft made fun of example in America: Boehner. It looks like boner, but it's pronounced bay-ner. We had a teacher in middle school whose name was Forget. I'm trying to think of other funny ones.
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby linguoboy » 2012-03-11, 18:22

Sol Invictus wrote:God's child

I wonder if this wasn't a name originally given to a foundling. Examples of such names from other languages are Casadio "House [of] God" (Italian) and Deulofeu "God made him" (Catalan).
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby JackFrost » 2012-03-11, 18:39

ILuvEire wrote:There's always the oft made fun of example in America: Boehner. It looks like boner, but it's pronounced bay-ner.

Speak for yourself. I say "boner".
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Re: ridiculous and weird surname

Postby linguoboy » 2012-03-11, 19:18

JackFrost wrote:
ILuvEire wrote:There's always the oft made fun of example in America: Boehner. It looks like boner, but it's pronounced bay-ner.

Speak for yourself. I say "boner".

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