1) To challenge the erasure of lesbian existence from scholarly feminist literature
* anti-lesbian and anti-feminist
* distorts the whole of female experience
2) To encourage heterosexual feminists to examine heterosexuality as a political institution which disempowers women
3) To encourage women to change it to help correct bias in feminist theory and thought
Main argument:
Compulsory heterosexuality:
* primary means of perpetuating male dominance
* heterosexuality
o a social institution
o cultural ideology
o devalues all forms of female friendship and community
o perpetuates women’s subordination to men
o "a beach head of male dominance" (man-made institution)
feminist critique of it: long overdue
a political institution
* Problems: Bias of compulsory heterosexuality
* lesbian existence - stifled theme in feminist research
o invalidated, forced into hiding in feminist research
o seen through bias of compulsory heterosexuality (from deviant to abhorrent)
Reality - lesbians choose other women as life partners and lovers
Would Women Freely Choose Heterosexuality?
* some would
* some would not
* Rossi - women are "innately" sexually oriented only toward men
* Lessing - lesbian is "simply acting out of her bitterness towards men"
* Biological view:
o men have only one innate orientation:
o a sexual one drawing them to women
o women have two innate orientations:
o a sexual one drawing them to men
o a reproductive one toward their young
Real theme in study of women’s lives:
* resistance a major theme
* woman bonding and woman identification as essential for female survival:
1) its politically activating purpose
2) validation of personal lives
Rich’s purpose:
* to incite new kinds of feminist criticism
* to bridge the gap between lesbian and feminist (idea of lesbian continuum)
* to ask all feminist researchers to heed women of color’s analyses (double bias of sexism and racism)
* to learn from female separatism in lesbian existence (women- connected existence)
* to ask all feminists to examine their heterocentricity (unexamined assumption in heterosexual feminist research)
* Conservatism in American Politics (at time of writing article)
* New Right’s Message (today: Christian Coalition)
1) women are emotional and sexual property of men
2) women’s autonomy and equality threaten family, religion, and state
What are WOMEN-CONTROLLING INSTITUTIONS:
1) patriarchal motherhood
2) economic exploitation (lower pay)
3) nuclear family
4) compulsory heterosexuality also in a bad economy feminization of poverty
Rich firmly believes:
* heterosexual feminists will draw political strength for change by taking a critical stance toward the ideology that demands heterosexuality
* to examine female sexuality one cannot erase lesbian existence
* lesbian existence could be used as a course of power and knowledge for all women
Rich demonstrates lack of examination of compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence in feminist scholarship
* Ehrenrich and English
* Katz
* Baker Miller
* Dinnerstein
Chodorow
Gough’s useful framework from "Origin of the Family"
* (Gough does not perceive these power characteristics as enforcing heterosexuality, only as producing sexual inequality)
Gough’s Characteristics of Male Power:
1) to deny women their own sexuality
2) to force male sexuality on women through rape
3) to command or exploit female labor to control their production
4) to control or rob them of their children (lesbian mothers)
5) to confine them physically and prevent their movement
6) to use them as objects in male transactions
7) to cramp their creativeness
8) to withhold from them large areas of the society’s knowledge and cultural attainments (sex-role teaching in profession)
Male Power
* maintained and manifested
* controls women’s lives through physical brutality
* controls women’s consciousness (gives impression that women are an "enormous potential counterforce" to be constrained
Examples of bias and forms of violence against women:
* Africa and Arab World - clitorectomy
* pornography - sex as power
* women as sexual prey
* rape
* women as objects
* sex and violence connected
* sexual harassment of women in workplace
Men’s greatest fear
* women could be indifferent to them altogether
* women’s exclusion of men from their lives
Feminist scholars who correct bias:
Barry
Sundae
MacKinnon
Daly
Cavin
Lesbian - not a clinical genital definition
Central to lesbian existence - the physical passion of women for women
Courage in scholarship needed by heterosexual feminists to examine:
* historical perspectives
* creation of meaning in lesbian existence
Lesbian continuum - to include a range - through each women’s life and through history - of WOMEN-IDENTIFIED experience
Definition of lesbian existence
* breaking of TABOO
* rejection of a compulsory lifestyle
living without access to knowledge of traditions
* deprived of our political existence
(included as part of male homosexuality)
unlike homosexual men
* lesbians as women lack economic and cultural privilege relative to men
- anonymous sex not favored in lesbian existence
* male preference to whichprostitutes cater to earn quick money (much risk involved)
* female bonding not exclusively erotic discover erotic in female terms
* all women exist on a LESBIAN CONTINUUM whether we identify as lesbians or not (Sappho 7th Century B.C.)
MARRIAGE RESISTERS
Heterosexual preference imposed on all women
* History of Women’s Resistance in History
* women have always resisted male tyranny
continuum-something absolutely (Webster’s) continuous and homogenous of which no distinction of content can be affirmed except by reference to something else (as duration)
* something in which a fundamental common character is discernible amid a series of insensible or indefinite variations
* an uninterrupted ordered sequence
* an identity of substance uniting discrete parts
a set with the same transfinite cardinal number as the set of real numbers
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Strange case of the disappearing islands
In September 2009 it was reported that, in spite of being on maps for centuries, the tiny island of Bermeja, in the Gulf of Mexico, could no longer be found. check this site for valuable resouces www.getpaido.blogspot.com
The Mexican Government sent out planes and boats and used satellites to try to find it but it was gone. And, along with it, a large claim Mexico was making in the hydrocarbon-rich waters of the Gulf. Some in Mexico said that, clearly, the CIA had blown up their island to subvert their stake.
The United States’ response was clear: no island, no claim.
New Moore Island was a hotly contested island in the Bay of Bengal. Claimed by both India and Bangladesh, it was in a geostrategic position, at the mouth of the Hariabhanga river, the boundary between the two countries. For decades the two countries manoeuvred for control. No more.
A few weeks ago, news broke that New Moore Island had disappeared, probably due to rising sea levels. And when the island disappeared, so did the claims.
With rising sea levels, the problem of land loss potentially leading to maritime zone loss is likely to come up more and more often. This is especially true in the Pacific, where there are entire nations composed of tiny, low-lying islands.
CCID: 16375
Click Here!
One may think of Kiribati as a small country, but because its islands are well scattered over a large section of the Pacific, it has a maritime exclusive economic zone (EEZ) approximately the size of India. That’s a lot of fish, seabed mining rights, shipping lanes and geostrategic positioning (it’s not an accident that China had a much-valued base in Kiribati).
As islands submerge, seabed rights could be lost, valuable and culturally important territorial fishing grounds could pass in to international waters, and, in the most extreme case – say if Tuvalu is submerged and evacuated – there is the prospect of the legal extinction of an entire country.
If Tuvalu is no longer above sea level, and “no island, no claim” is invoked, Tuvalu could face not only losing its fishing grounds, but cease to exist as a state, thus losing its seat in the United Nations and having its citizens become, literally, stateless.
There may be ways to avoid this, but planning will need to begin now. And the starting point is the main law governing the seas, the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas.
Signed by all major countries except the US, the convention is an exceptional document, offering myriad, detailed guidelines for measuring maritime boundaries and more.
However, the convention operates from the assumption that there will be no major changes to the coastlines and islands upon which claims are made – something that is already not the case.
The way the convention claims the system works is, a country puts in the map of its claims and, assuming it follows the guidelines, the map is accepted. Unless the map is challenged by another country; that is where it can get very political, very quickly.
Assume a nation puts in a map based on existing islands but, in a few years, some of those islands disappear or the coastline floods and retreats. Other countries may threaten to challenge that nation’s claim unless it gives them concessions in other areas, for example in the UN.
Or, if other nations want access to the waters themselves, they may challenge the claims regardless. It may be possible to attenuate some of these problems by freezing borders at a given point in time (say as per satellite imagery from 2005), but many complications will remain.
Because the convention didn’t take environmental change in to account when it was drafted, it may end up creating new geopolitical hotspots. Some are trying to bypass this by finding bilateral or regional solutions.
As with Tuvalu, the Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives is composed entirely of low-lying coral atolls. Its president, Mohamed Nasheed, has been actively trying to secure a home for his citizens should evacuation prove necessary. One approach was land purchase. According to President Nasheed: “We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It’s an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome. After all, the Israelis [began by buying] land in Palestine.”
Another approach is to use the value of national sovereignty to “pay” for relocation. In that model, neighbouring India, for example, would take in the Maldivian immigrants in exchange for India being able to extend its national waters to include Maldivian waters.
The proceeds from this extended EEZ (fisheries rights, seabed mining, etc) could be used to resettle and set up a trust fund for Maldivian immigrants, along the lines of land claim settlements in Canada. Maldivians could also get preferential access to the waters for economic development and, should the islands ever re-emerge, resettlement could be possible. The advantage for India would be an orderly settlement of relatively wealthy immigrants, and an extension of its coastal security zone.
This model might also be applicable in the Pacific. For example, if as the scientists tell us, Tuvalu will eventually need to be evacuated, and New Zealand takes in the bulk of the refugees, that patch of ocean could be administered from New Zealand by and for the benefit of the immigrants, affording resettlement money and economic prospects associated with their old homeland for those who want it.
The administration could be done through a sort of combination government-in-exile and trust.
It is worth noting that the host country need not be New Zealand or Australia. Given the geostrategic importance of the region, a “bidding war” for the immigrants might ensue with countries such as China and Taiwan looking to take in the immigrants in exchange for increased access to the region.
While this might seem far-fetched, what are the alternatives? If accepting the reality that some countries might need to be completely evacuated, a way forward of some sort will need to be found if a free-for-all is to be avoided. If left to the crisis point, it could end up in completely new and potentially undesirable forms of sovereignty.
For example, while the rest of Tuvalu is evacuated, one of the islands could be built up. That would probably qualify it as an “artificial island”, affording it only a 500m safety zone, not the 200 nautical mile EEZ, but it would be enough to ensure statehood. That statehood could then be sold off to corporations who could then literally become sovereign, writing laws under which they flag ships, bank, run telecoms, sell arms, etc, with the impunity and immunity of statehood. This could have far-reaching security implications.
Though we are starting to understand the potentially far-reaching consequences of environmental change on our physical infrastructure, we have yet to acknowledge potential challenges for legal infrastructure. This is a real tragedy as legal infrastructure is entirely manmade and so, in many cases, risks and tragedies can be avoided by nothing more than the stroke of a pen. All it takes is a little foresight. www.getpaido.blogspot.com
With environmental change, there are some very rough waters ahead. It would be good to at least avoid some of the whirlpool we ourselves created by a lack of imagination.
The Mexican Government sent out planes and boats and used satellites to try to find it but it was gone. And, along with it, a large claim Mexico was making in the hydrocarbon-rich waters of the Gulf. Some in Mexico said that, clearly, the CIA had blown up their island to subvert their stake.
The United States’ response was clear: no island, no claim.
New Moore Island was a hotly contested island in the Bay of Bengal. Claimed by both India and Bangladesh, it was in a geostrategic position, at the mouth of the Hariabhanga river, the boundary between the two countries. For decades the two countries manoeuvred for control. No more.
A few weeks ago, news broke that New Moore Island had disappeared, probably due to rising sea levels. And when the island disappeared, so did the claims.
With rising sea levels, the problem of land loss potentially leading to maritime zone loss is likely to come up more and more often. This is especially true in the Pacific, where there are entire nations composed of tiny, low-lying islands.
CCID: 16375
Click Here!
One may think of Kiribati as a small country, but because its islands are well scattered over a large section of the Pacific, it has a maritime exclusive economic zone (EEZ) approximately the size of India. That’s a lot of fish, seabed mining rights, shipping lanes and geostrategic positioning (it’s not an accident that China had a much-valued base in Kiribati).
As islands submerge, seabed rights could be lost, valuable and culturally important territorial fishing grounds could pass in to international waters, and, in the most extreme case – say if Tuvalu is submerged and evacuated – there is the prospect of the legal extinction of an entire country.
If Tuvalu is no longer above sea level, and “no island, no claim” is invoked, Tuvalu could face not only losing its fishing grounds, but cease to exist as a state, thus losing its seat in the United Nations and having its citizens become, literally, stateless.
There may be ways to avoid this, but planning will need to begin now. And the starting point is the main law governing the seas, the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas.
Signed by all major countries except the US, the convention is an exceptional document, offering myriad, detailed guidelines for measuring maritime boundaries and more.
However, the convention operates from the assumption that there will be no major changes to the coastlines and islands upon which claims are made – something that is already not the case.
The way the convention claims the system works is, a country puts in the map of its claims and, assuming it follows the guidelines, the map is accepted. Unless the map is challenged by another country; that is where it can get very political, very quickly.
Assume a nation puts in a map based on existing islands but, in a few years, some of those islands disappear or the coastline floods and retreats. Other countries may threaten to challenge that nation’s claim unless it gives them concessions in other areas, for example in the UN.
Or, if other nations want access to the waters themselves, they may challenge the claims regardless. It may be possible to attenuate some of these problems by freezing borders at a given point in time (say as per satellite imagery from 2005), but many complications will remain.
Because the convention didn’t take environmental change in to account when it was drafted, it may end up creating new geopolitical hotspots. Some are trying to bypass this by finding bilateral or regional solutions.
As with Tuvalu, the Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives is composed entirely of low-lying coral atolls. Its president, Mohamed Nasheed, has been actively trying to secure a home for his citizens should evacuation prove necessary. One approach was land purchase. According to President Nasheed: “We can do nothing to stop climate change on our own and so we have to buy land elsewhere. It’s an insurance policy for the worst possible outcome. After all, the Israelis [began by buying] land in Palestine.”
Another approach is to use the value of national sovereignty to “pay” for relocation. In that model, neighbouring India, for example, would take in the Maldivian immigrants in exchange for India being able to extend its national waters to include Maldivian waters.
The proceeds from this extended EEZ (fisheries rights, seabed mining, etc) could be used to resettle and set up a trust fund for Maldivian immigrants, along the lines of land claim settlements in Canada. Maldivians could also get preferential access to the waters for economic development and, should the islands ever re-emerge, resettlement could be possible. The advantage for India would be an orderly settlement of relatively wealthy immigrants, and an extension of its coastal security zone.
This model might also be applicable in the Pacific. For example, if as the scientists tell us, Tuvalu will eventually need to be evacuated, and New Zealand takes in the bulk of the refugees, that patch of ocean could be administered from New Zealand by and for the benefit of the immigrants, affording resettlement money and economic prospects associated with their old homeland for those who want it.
The administration could be done through a sort of combination government-in-exile and trust.
It is worth noting that the host country need not be New Zealand or Australia. Given the geostrategic importance of the region, a “bidding war” for the immigrants might ensue with countries such as China and Taiwan looking to take in the immigrants in exchange for increased access to the region.
While this might seem far-fetched, what are the alternatives? If accepting the reality that some countries might need to be completely evacuated, a way forward of some sort will need to be found if a free-for-all is to be avoided. If left to the crisis point, it could end up in completely new and potentially undesirable forms of sovereignty.
For example, while the rest of Tuvalu is evacuated, one of the islands could be built up. That would probably qualify it as an “artificial island”, affording it only a 500m safety zone, not the 200 nautical mile EEZ, but it would be enough to ensure statehood. That statehood could then be sold off to corporations who could then literally become sovereign, writing laws under which they flag ships, bank, run telecoms, sell arms, etc, with the impunity and immunity of statehood. This could have far-reaching security implications.
Though we are starting to understand the potentially far-reaching consequences of environmental change on our physical infrastructure, we have yet to acknowledge potential challenges for legal infrastructure. This is a real tragedy as legal infrastructure is entirely manmade and so, in many cases, risks and tragedies can be avoided by nothing more than the stroke of a pen. All it takes is a little foresight. www.getpaido.blogspot.com
With environmental change, there are some very rough waters ahead. It would be good to at least avoid some of the whirlpool we ourselves created by a lack of imagination.
How to determine country origins of surnames
W hat's In a Name? - This is included in one of the most widely quoted phrases in English. Every casual writer about names feels that he must use the phrase at least once in his article if, indeed, he does not make it the title of his sketch.
Shakespeare's assertion has had an influence on the thinking of many - that names really do not matter. Most of us are interested in names and how their origins derived. Surnames are fossilized echoes of ancient voices of ancestors singling out each other in fields, castles, manor halls, monasteries, and medieval villages.
Now, the term 'surname' comes from the medieval French word 'surnom' translating as "above-or-over name". Ancient French legal documents and records differentiated a particular Pierre and a particular Marie from other Pierre's and Marie's by inscribing a second name over a first name as with the following examples:du bois (the woodcutter) Pierre la blanc (the blonde-haired one) MarieNow, how did so many different surnames originate? Many in their genealogical search have found, for instance, that different branches of their family have come to spell their name differently, or that some members have changed the name entirely, or perhaps that an immigration officer or some other public official a century ago wrote down a wrong form which now has become the accepted one. Others have learned for the first time the original, literal meaning of their name, for instance, that the first Frenchman to have the name Lesueur was named for his job, making shoes, or that Ramsbottom has nothing to do with ovine anatomy. The ancestral Ramsbottom, by the way, came from the village of that name in Lancashire, with the term ram meaning 'wild garlic' and bottom indicating the 'lowland' where it grew.
When the world's population was small and even a city might hold only a few thousand people, and when most folks never got more than ten or fifteen miles from their birthplace (usually walking), and when messages were sent by personal messenger rather than by impersonal post, there was hardly a necessity for more than one name. Even kings got by with a single name. When someone referred to King David, there was no need to ask David who?
No one knows who first felt the need to apply any name at all to himself or any of his fellows. According to the Roman statesman Pliny, some ancient tribes were anonymi and it is barely possible that a few anonymi may still exist in remote corners of the world. But
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for the most part personal names of some sort exist wherever there are human beings.
"A distinguishing label" - that of course is what a name is. It differentiates one person from another, allowing a mother to single out one child's attention, helping an officer to address a command to an individual, assisting any of us to carry out our daily tasks that depend on distinguishing one person from another.
click here for more resource
Almost all the occupational names, for example, refer to work done mainly or entirely by men in the Middle Ages, and countless fathers but few mothers were memorialized in names that would become family names.
If the Middle Ages had been urbanized, no doubt the use of second names would have accelerated as well. If a city has three thousand Williams, ways must be found, of course, to indicate which William one talks about. A typical medieval village, though, might have had only five or ten Williams, a similar number of Johns, and maybe two or three Roberts or Thomases.
In the rush of conversation the little, unimportant words could drop out or be slurred over so that John from the hill became John hill, and the other persons could be John dale, John William's son, John Robert's son, John smith, John tailor, John long, and John bald (or ballard, which means). The capital letters that we now associate with surnames are only scribal conventions introduced later on. Distinctions like those illustrated in the conversations were a step toward surnames. But the son of John the smith might be Robert the wainwright . That is, he did not inherit the designation smith from his father. There were no true English surnames - family names - until Robert the son of John smith became known as Robert smith (or Smith) even though his occupation was a wainwright, a fletcher , a tanner or barker , or anything else. Only when the second name was passed down from one generation to the next did it become a surname.
That step did not occur suddenly or uniformly, although throughout most of Europe it was a medieval development. Before the fourteenth century most of the differentiating adjuncts were prefaced by filius (son of), as in Adam fil' Gilberti, by le , as in Beaudrey le Teuton, by de , as in Rogerius de Molls , or by atta , as in John atte Water , which later might be John Atwater. These particles often dropped out. Thus a fourteenth-century scribe might have begun writing his name as David Tresruf, but other evidence shows that Tresruf was simply a place name and that David de Tresruf was the way the scribe earlier wrote his name. It was not until about 1500 A.D. that most surnames became inherited and no longer varied with a change in a person's appearance, job, or place of residence.
It can now be said that almost all English and Continental surnames fall into the four categories: 1. Place Names John Hill, John Atwater 2. Patronyms (or others based on personal names John Robertson, John Williams, John Alexander 3. Occupational Names John Smith, John Fletcher 4. Descriptive/Nicknames Names John Long, John Armstrong click here for more resources
With a few exceptions the million-plus surnames that North Americans bear are of these four sorts. If we were mainly an Oriental or an African nation, the patterns would be different. But we are primarily European in our origins, and in Europe it seemed natural to identify each person during the surname-giving period according to location, parentage, occupation, appearance or other characteristics.
The proportion in each category of names may vary from one European language to another. Thus 70 percent or more of Irish, Welsh, and Scandinavian surnames are patronyms. Spanish families have also preferred patronyms, but place names are not far behind. In France patronyms lead once more, but names of occupations are in second place. In Germany, however, patronyms of the simple English sort are relatively few, although hereditary combinative descriptions are common, occupational names are frequent, and place names not uncommon. In most countries personal descriptive surnames lag behind the others.
The first immigrants to North America were probably those people we call Indians or, more recently but not much more accurately, native Canadians & native Americans. But scientists still argue about just where the Indians came from and when and how. And we know nothing of the names they carried with them in our prehistory. The total number of "Indians," including any possibly surviving descendants of the other early European settlers, was not large when Columbus came. Some demographers estimate that north of Mexico there were barely a million inhabitants in the 15th century.
The first European settlers after Columbus whose settlement has survived were the Spanish founders of Saint Augustine, Florida, in 1565. The English were responsible for the ill-starred Jamestown Colony, starting in 1607. With 1608, Canada, itself, saw the establishment of a French Colony at Port Royal in Nova Scotia, British settlement there later in 1623 and the very important Hudson Bay Company traders of 1670. With the advent of ever-increasing immigration to the New World, Canada saw more settlers from the European communities in small numbers but wasn't until the mid-19th century that these ethnic groups started to immigrate to Canada and the U.S. in large numbers.
It is uncertain as to the proportion of British settlers to non-British ones but they certainly were the majority by the turn of the century and even today, our British ancestry remains the most influential on our Canadian fabric. As a result, the British influence on the names that exist today in this country has been immense and follows basically the four naming conventions already mentioned. click here for more resources
It is estimated that approximately 10% of our Family Names come from NICKNAMES. As with today, people who lived in a small village in the Middle Ages knew everyone in their small settlements and they too joked and gossiped about each other. Nicknames were easy to invent, for everyone knew a great deal about each other's personality and physical characteristics. A person with a large head might be called Broadhead or Bullitt (bullish). A thin person was nicknamed Baines (bones) or Spriggs (sprig of a bush). The very tall one may have been identified as Longfellow, Crane, or Biggs.
Personal appearance nicknames were popular in the Middle Ages, the recipient being easily identifiable from amongst his or her family members or gatherings of townspeople. Sources for nicknames included: unusual size or shape of the body, bald heads, facial differences, deformities, and comparisons with birds. Nicknames also were used to differentiate or compare people: whether they were fat or thin, tall or short, dark or light skin, young or old.
In addition, throughout the ages cute infants have always been admired. The influx of Flemish immigrants into England in the late 12th century introduced their vernacular use of quin (kin). By 1300 A.D. the suffix "kin" was frequently added to a cute youngster's name: Hawkin(s), Watkin(s), Perkin(s), Hopkin(s), etc. The final "s" identified the child as "son of-". It should be noted that 'kin' suffix was used almost exclusively by the English lower class.
We also often identify people by mentioning their OCCUPATIONS. We say "the dry cleaner", "the mailman", "the preacher", or "the plumber". Our ancestors were no different and also identified persons by their occupations. It is estimated that 15% of our Family Names come from occupations.
Occupational names are of interest and variety. They also differed depending upon their gender origins. Some female workers in the Middle Ages often had occupational names that were slightly different from male workers who did the same kind of work. The difference was the addition of 'ster' to the occupation names. Occupational names came from the gamut of vocations that existed during the Middle Ages. No occupation escaped the naming convention development.
In 1066 A.D. William the Conqueror and his Norman-French army invaded and gained possession of the British Isles. This military conquest changed the naming customs of the British people forever. The French language quickly replaced Anglo-Saxon ways of speech and writing. A new style of personal or first names gradually was accepted by the conquered Anglo-Saxons. So influential and complete was the Norman invasion that just during the first fifty years of the Norman-French government most of the original Anglo-Saxon names had already disappeared. By 1150 A.D. the French language of the Normans had established new customs for the British people. The earlier English (Anglo-Saxons) now used the Norman-French naming system when they baptized their babies.
It has been estimated that almost 50% of the male babies born by 1200 A.D. were using just four common first names: William (15%), Robert (12%), Richard (11%) and Henry (10%). Such percentages show the need, even by the Middle Ages, for a second name of identification. As a result, PATRONYMIC naming conventions came into play whereby son's were named after their father's, and sometimes even after their mothers. Examples of this naming convention are as follows:
FROM FATHER:
William Robertson (William son of Robert)
Richard Peterson (Richard son of Peter) FROM MOTHER:
Richard Addison (Richard son of Addie [Adela])
Hugh Ibbotson (Hugh son of Ibbo [Isobel])
It must be said in regard to the patronymic naming convention that if your family name does not end in 'son' or 'sen' that it is not of patronymic origin. This is simply not the case. Most names have been misspelled and mispronounced over the centuries dropping many of these endings for more abbreviated versions that many names are impossible to determine their root origins anymore. The root origin for over one-third (35%) of our family names, however, originate with the patronymic naming convention.
Lastly, by far the largest root origin of our family names is by way of ADDRESS or PLACE NAMES (40%). Peasants of the Middle Ages were keen observers of the geography where they lived. Any outdoor feature was often a special kind of landmark. Neighbours were usually identified by a hill, rock, well, swamp, building, or even a ditch near the place where the neighbour lived. Such an address reference also became a second name for the neighbour.
Our telephone books are littered with family names offering us clues and hints of the medieval landscape where some early ancestors once lived:
ANCESTOR ADDRESS Atfield lived at a field or meadow Atgate lived at or near an estate gate Atkirk lived at or near a church Atwood lived at a place in a woods Kirkham lived in a village with a church
The four directions of the compass were also common identifications in the Middle Ages:
Eastwood lived in a nearby woods easterly Westbrook lived near a western brook of the village Sudlow lived on a mound in the southern part of the village Norwood lived in a nearby woods to the north
Ancestors who lived in a village sometimes also were named and identified from the nearest shop with a signboard. Since most Middle Age ancestors were unable to read, all shops displayed a large signboard with a drawing. Thus a village ancestor could be named as follows:
ANCESTOR ADDRESS John BELL lived near the shop sign of a bell Mary CROSS lived near the shop sign of a cross Richard CONEY lived near the shop sign of a rabbitAgain as with patronymic names, misspellings and mispronunciation of medieval address names over the centuries for ancestors have confused the results in so many ways that it may be next to impossible to determine what the root origin was of some of these family surnames.
Surname spelling and pronunciation has evolved over many centuries, with our current generations often unaware of the origin and evolution of their surnames. Among the humble classes of European society, and especially among the illiterate, individuals had little choice but to accept the mistakes of officials, clerks, and priests who officially bestowed upon them new versions of their surnames, just as they had meekly accepted the surnames which they were born with. In North America, the linguistic problems confronting immigration officials at Halifax, Quebec City, Ellis Island and elsewhere in the 19th century were legendary as a prolific source of Anglicization, though not as often as professed. Many of the Anglicizations came from the immigrant who themselves who chose to better fit into the mosaic. In the United States and Canada, such processes of official and accidental change caused for example, Bauch to become Baugh, Micsza to become McShea, Siminowicz to become Simmons, etc. However, as mentioned, many immigrants deliberately Anglicized or changed their surnames (and first also first names) upon arrive in the New World, so that Mlynar became Miller, Zimmerman became Carpenter, and Schwartz became Black. click here for more resources
Hence, regardless of the current spelling of your surname, the spelling and pronunciation of your surname has evolved over the centuries. In many cases, the current generation may be aware of the change. However, in most cases the change of the surname occurred to long ago that they are not aware of the original spelling and pronunciation of the surname.
Shakespeare's assertion has had an influence on the thinking of many - that names really do not matter. Most of us are interested in names and how their origins derived. Surnames are fossilized echoes of ancient voices of ancestors singling out each other in fields, castles, manor halls, monasteries, and medieval villages.
Now, the term 'surname' comes from the medieval French word 'surnom' translating as "above-or-over name". Ancient French legal documents and records differentiated a particular Pierre and a particular Marie from other Pierre's and Marie's by inscribing a second name over a first name as with the following examples:du bois (the woodcutter) Pierre la blanc (the blonde-haired one) MarieNow, how did so many different surnames originate? Many in their genealogical search have found, for instance, that different branches of their family have come to spell their name differently, or that some members have changed the name entirely, or perhaps that an immigration officer or some other public official a century ago wrote down a wrong form which now has become the accepted one. Others have learned for the first time the original, literal meaning of their name, for instance, that the first Frenchman to have the name Lesueur was named for his job, making shoes, or that Ramsbottom has nothing to do with ovine anatomy. The ancestral Ramsbottom, by the way, came from the village of that name in Lancashire, with the term ram meaning 'wild garlic' and bottom indicating the 'lowland' where it grew.
When the world's population was small and even a city might hold only a few thousand people, and when most folks never got more than ten or fifteen miles from their birthplace (usually walking), and when messages were sent by personal messenger rather than by impersonal post, there was hardly a necessity for more than one name. Even kings got by with a single name. When someone referred to King David, there was no need to ask David who?
No one knows who first felt the need to apply any name at all to himself or any of his fellows. According to the Roman statesman Pliny, some ancient tribes were anonymi
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How to determine country origins of surnames
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for the most part personal names of some sort exist wherever there are human beings.
"A distinguishing label" - that of course is what a name is. It differentiates one person from another, allowing a mother to single out one child's attention, helping an officer to address a command to an individual, assisting any of us to carry out our daily tasks that depend on distinguishing one person from another.
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Almost all the occupational names, for example, refer to work done mainly or entirely by men in the Middle Ages, and countless fathers but few mothers were memorialized in names that would become family names.
If the Middle Ages had been urbanized, no doubt the use of second names would have accelerated as well. If a city has three thousand Williams, ways must be found, of course, to indicate which William one talks about. A typical medieval village, though, might have had only five or ten Williams, a similar number of Johns, and maybe two or three Roberts or Thomases.
In the rush of conversation the little, unimportant words could drop out or be slurred over so that John from the hill became John hill, and the other persons could be John dale, John William's son, John Robert's son, John smith, John tailor, John long, and John bald (or ballard, which means
That step did not occur suddenly or uniformly, although throughout most of Europe it was a medieval development. Before the fourteenth century most of the differentiating adjuncts were prefaced by filius (son of), as in Adam fil' Gilberti
It can now be said that almost all English and Continental surnames fall into the four categories: 1. Place Names John Hill, John Atwater 2. Patronyms (or others based on personal names John Robertson, John Williams, John Alexander 3. Occupational Names John Smith, John Fletcher 4. Descriptive/Nicknames Names John Long, John Armstrong click here for more resources
With a few exceptions the million-plus surnames that North Americans bear are of these four sorts. If we were mainly an Oriental or an African nation, the patterns would be different. But we are primarily European in our origins, and in Europe it seemed natural to identify each person during the surname-giving period according to location, parentage, occupation, appearance or other characteristics.
The proportion in each category of names may vary from one European language to another. Thus 70 percent or more of Irish, Welsh, and Scandinavian surnames are patronyms. Spanish families have also preferred patronyms, but place names are not far behind. In France patronyms lead once more, but names of occupations are in second place. In Germany, however, patronyms of the simple English sort are relatively few, although hereditary combinative descriptions are common, occupational names are frequent, and place names not uncommon. In most countries personal descriptive surnames lag behind the others.
The first immigrants to North America were probably those people we call Indians or, more recently but not much more accurately, native Canadians & native Americans. But scientists still argue about just where the Indians came from and when and how. And we know nothing of the names they carried with them in our prehistory. The total number of "Indians," including any possibly surviving descendants of the other early European settlers, was not large when Columbus came. Some demographers estimate that north of Mexico there were barely a million inhabitants in the 15th century.
The first European settlers after Columbus whose settlement has survived were the Spanish founders of Saint Augustine, Florida, in 1565. The English were responsible for the ill-starred Jamestown Colony, starting in 1607. With 1608, Canada, itself, saw the establishment of a French Colony at Port Royal in Nova Scotia, British settlement there later in 1623 and the very important Hudson Bay Company traders of 1670. With the advent of ever-increasing immigration to the New World, Canada saw more settlers from the European communities in small numbers but wasn't until the mid-19th century that these ethnic groups started to immigrate to Canada and the U.S. in large numbers.
It is uncertain as to the proportion of British settlers to non-British ones but they certainly were the majority by the turn of the century and even today, our British ancestry remains the most influential on our Canadian fabric. As a result, the British influence on the names that exist today in this country has been immense and follows basically the four naming conventions already mentioned. click here for more resources
It is estimated that approximately 10% of our Family Names come from NICKNAMES. As with today, people who lived in a small village in the Middle Ages knew everyone in their small settlements and they too joked and gossiped about each other. Nicknames were easy to invent, for everyone knew a great deal about each other's personality and physical characteristics. A person with a large head might be called Broadhead or Bullitt (bullish). A thin person was nicknamed Baines (bones) or Spriggs (sprig of a bush). The very tall one may have been identified as Longfellow, Crane, or Biggs.
Personal appearance nicknames were popular in the Middle Ages, the recipient being easily identifiable from amongst his or her family members or gatherings of townspeople. Sources for nicknames included: unusual size or shape of the body, bald heads, facial differences, deformities, and comparisons with birds. Nicknames also were used to differentiate or compare people: whether they were fat or thin, tall or short, dark or light skin, young or old.
In addition, throughout the ages cute infants have always been admired. The influx of Flemish immigrants into England in the late 12th century introduced their vernacular use of quin (kin). By 1300 A.D. the suffix "kin" was frequently added to a cute youngster's name: Hawkin(s), Watkin(s), Perkin(s), Hopkin(s), etc. The final "s" identified the child as "son of-". It should be noted that 'kin' suffix was used almost exclusively by the English lower class.
We also often identify people by mentioning their OCCUPATIONS. We say "the dry cleaner", "the mailman", "the preacher", or "the plumber". Our ancestors were no different and also identified persons by their occupations. It is estimated that 15% of our Family Names come from occupations.
Occupational names are of interest and variety. They also differed depending upon their gender origins. Some female workers in the Middle Ages often had occupational names that were slightly different from male workers who did the same kind of work. The difference was the addition of 'ster' to the occupation names. Occupational names came from the gamut of vocations that existed during the Middle Ages. No occupation escaped the naming convention development.
In 1066 A.D. William the Conqueror and his Norman-French army invaded and gained possession of the British Isles. This military conquest changed the naming customs of the British people forever. The French language quickly replaced Anglo-Saxon ways of speech and writing. A new style of personal or first names gradually was accepted by the conquered Anglo-Saxons. So influential and complete was the Norman invasion that just during the first fifty years of the Norman-French government most of the original Anglo-Saxon names had already disappeared. By 1150 A.D. the French language of the Normans had established new customs for the British people. The earlier English (Anglo-Saxons) now used the Norman-French naming system when they baptized their babies.
It has been estimated that almost 50% of the male babies born by 1200 A.D. were using just four common first names: William (15%), Robert (12%), Richard (11%) and Henry (10%). Such percentages show the need, even by the Middle Ages, for a second name of identification. As a result, PATRONYMIC naming conventions came into play whereby son's were named after their father's, and sometimes even after their mothers. Examples of this naming convention are as follows:
FROM FATHER:
William Robertson (William son of Robert)
Richard Peterson (Richard son of Peter) FROM MOTHER:
Richard Addison (Richard son of Addie [Adela])
Hugh Ibbotson (Hugh son of Ibbo [Isobel])
It must be said in regard to the patronymic naming convention that if your family name does not end in 'son' or 'sen' that it is not of patronymic origin. This is simply not the case. Most names have been misspelled and mispronounced over the centuries dropping many of these endings for more abbreviated versions that many names are impossible to determine their root origins anymore. The root origin for over one-third (35%) of our family names, however, originate with the patronymic naming convention.
Lastly, by far the largest root origin of our family names is by way of ADDRESS or PLACE NAMES (40%). Peasants of the Middle Ages were keen observers of the geography where they lived. Any outdoor feature was often a special kind of landmark. Neighbours were usually identified by a hill, rock, well, swamp, building, or even a ditch near the place where the neighbour lived. Such an address reference also became a second name for the neighbour.
Our telephone books are littered with family names offering us clues and hints of the medieval landscape where some early ancestors once lived:
ANCESTOR ADDRESS Atfield lived at a field or meadow Atgate lived at or near an estate gate Atkirk lived at or near a church Atwood lived at a place in a woods Kirkham lived in a village with a church
The four directions of the compass were also common identifications in the Middle Ages:
Eastwood lived in a nearby woods easterly Westbrook lived near a western brook of the village Sudlow lived on a mound in the southern part of the village Norwood lived in a nearby woods to the north
Ancestors who lived in a village sometimes also were named and identified from the nearest shop with a signboard. Since most Middle Age ancestors were unable to read, all shops displayed a large signboard with a drawing. Thus a village ancestor could be named as follows:
ANCESTOR ADDRESS John BELL lived near the shop sign of a bell Mary CROSS lived near the shop sign of a cross Richard CONEY lived near the shop sign of a rabbitAgain as with patronymic names, misspellings and mispronunciation of medieval address names over the centuries for ancestors have confused the results in so many ways that it may be next to impossible to determine what the root origin was of some of these family surnames.
Surname spelling and pronunciation has evolved over many centuries, with our current generations often unaware of the origin and evolution of their surnames. Among the humble classes of European society, and especially among the illiterate, individuals had little choice but to accept the mistakes of officials, clerks, and priests who officially bestowed upon them new versions of their surnames, just as they had meekly accepted the surnames which they were born with. In North America, the linguistic problems confronting immigration officials at Halifax, Quebec City, Ellis Island and elsewhere in the 19th century were legendary as a prolific source of Anglicization, though not as often as professed. Many of the Anglicizations came from the immigrant who themselves who chose to better fit into the mosaic. In the United States and Canada, such processes of official and accidental change caused for example, Bauch to become Baugh, Micsza to become McShea, Siminowicz to become Simmons, etc. However, as mentioned, many immigrants deliberately Anglicized or changed their surnames (and first also first names) upon arrive in the New World, so that Mlynar became Miller, Zimmerman became Carpenter, and Schwartz became Black. click here for more resources
Hence, regardless of the current spelling of your surname, the spelling and pronunciation of your surname has evolved over the centuries. In many cases, the current generation may be aware of the change. However, in most cases the change of the surname occurred to long ago that they are not aware of the original spelling and pronunciation of the surname.
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