LESP, Part 6

[uzbradistan]

Yes -- more!!

Comments

[max243732]

Can we get a consolidated, alphabetized list? (Next step: create a wiki site for people to add new ones...)

[uzbradistan]

Now you've got me scheming to make a website devoted to this project... :)

[sandydelaware]

Max and I saw a good one in the Dr. Who credits recently -- Fairbairn (we were calling him Prettybaby)

[uzbradistan]

That is a good one, thanks for passing it along! I find that movie and TV show credits are indeed a rich source of literal English surnames.

"Fairbairn" reminds me of a more common variant which I think has eluded me thus far -- "Fairchild"!

[alpine_tunnel]

Somebody in today's newspaper had the last name "Clinkscales."

[uzbradistan]

Whoa -- what a doozy! That's a great one for the exotic category, thank you!

Looks like it's a very South Carolinian surname:

http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Clinkscales-family-history.ashx

There's even a Clinkscales Chevrolet in Anderson, SC. But it's only the #2 Google hit for "Clinkscales" -- number one is "Clinkscales Portable Toilets & Septic Service" which is "based in Molalla, Oregon". How 'bout that.

[uzbradistan]

This article mentions someone named "Fishman":

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2433

[uzbradistan]

Mere minutes later, my Forgotten English calendar informed that there was a 20th-century writer on British folk customs named Christina Hole.

It also mentions an author named Hensleigh Wedgwood. Does "Wedgwood" count? It can appear as if a compound of "wedge" and "wood", although it appears to not originate that at all, but rather (according to one theory Google found for me) from "wych [elm] wood".

Oh, did I list "Pound" yet, as in Ezra...?

[uzbradistan]

Met someone last Friday with the surname "Kindle".

[vroomsplat]

Wouldn't it be fairly easy for someone with the right skills to write a program that would go through a list of surnames and a dictionary, and spit out a list of all the surnames that are dictionary entries (or combinations of multiple dictionary entries)?

So all we need is someone who has some computer programming skills, and a list of all surnames - maybe a computer programmer who used to work for the Census Bureau or someone like that.

[uzbradistan]

Heh heh. Your point is well taken, although the exotic literal surnames -- which are the most fun part of all this -- are generally bizarre compounds that wouldn't show up in a dictionary, like Breedlove or Pennypacker.

Still, what you propose would turn up tons of 'em. I'll have to see if I can find such a list of surnames. Good idea! I'm ashamed I didn't think of it myself.

[uzbradistan]

Another challenge for the program you propose is dealing with names like "Shephard", which clearly means "shepherd" but wouldn't have an entry under that spelling in the dictionary. I think you'd want to somehow use this handy tool:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex