I've been collecting this latest batch for a while now. One day (maybe) I'll provide a single list of all the specimens caught so far. And a Wiki-style website where people can add new ones. In the meantime...

( Here's more )

People! The world is filled with literal English surnames. I will soon quit my day job, grow out my hair and beard, and clip these precious names out of newspapers and paste them on the rough-hewn boards that line my fifth-floor walk-up Lower East Side garret.

( Read more... )

A great "aptonym" (as Gene Weingarten would say): Sgt. Kristopher J. Battles.

The guy who recently won the Coney Island hot dog-eating contest was named Joey Chestnut. Not quite an aptonym, although his literal surname is at least something edible ( Read more... )

Yes -- more!!

( Not all that many more, actually )

Kendell and I got back last Sunday from a trip to Egypt and Jordan. But why talk about that when there are always plenty more literal English surnames to share?

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Well, it's been a while, and I've now collected a bunch more.

( More surname geekiness )

How could I forget the literal English surname of "Finch", as in Carl Finch, founder of Brave Combo? This weekend we watched the odd but charming movie True Stories, which was sort of a mockumentary from the Eighties by The Talking Heads about a town in Texas. Now, only a few months ago, I'd read in Carl Finch's monthly newsletter that he'd hung ( Read more... )

Literal: Mason, Rich, Wagoner.

Literal-ish: Drake (an unusual word); Keyes (an old spelling for "keys").

Exotic: Allbright [e.g. Madeleine].

Literal, but why did they choose it?: Little, Short, Small/Smalls. I gather that some people chose their surnames, some were born to them, and others had them thrust upon them. But surely at least some ( Read more... )

To continue my quest for more literal, and literal-ish, English surnames, here are some more that have occurred to me: Chambers; Fields, Fielding; Knight; Prentice/Prentiss; Squire; Waterman.

Thanks to my Forgotten English calendar, I've now heard of the English scholar C. T. OnionsWe went to Philadelphia last weekend to visit Kendell's aunt and ( Read more... )

Given how many names in English don't appear to mean anything -- not without a bit of etymological digging -- it's always interesting and sometimes amusing to find English names, surnames especially, that are recognizably literal English words or phrases.

So why don't we try to make a list of such surnames?

( Some initial concerns )