Likewise there are several patronymic surnames from the Welsh “ap <father’s name> (son of) that have ended up as new surnames retained the “ap” in several cases, mainly in reduced form at the start of the surname, as in Upjohn (from ap John), Powell (from ap Hywel), Price (from ap Rhys), Pritchard (from ap Richard), and Bowen (from ab Owen).
My surename is Svensson, literally "Sven's son". But patronymic surnames aren't used in Sweden/Norway anymore, so at some point we just got stuck with whatever father was the last in line, a bit weird. Maybe I should try to figure out which Sven it was.
I guess the tradition of it being the man's name passed on means that's why there is no common surnames with *dottir as it is with *son? (Not sure what the english version for a daughter is).
Had some Icelandic friends in school (which still has patronymic names, moved here after they were born), and it was for them somewhat problematic at times that the siblings had different surnames (Björnsdottir and Björnsson), as people don't assume they're family, and especially not that the parents both had different surnames again. Like school pickup with a teacher not knowing the situation.
When thinking about names: in Norway it's quite common to take both parents' names now. So I'm MKS (initials), where Mats is my first name, K is my middle name being mother's surname, and S my dad's surname. I think it's great to have a connection to both families, and that my mother and dad combines instead of one having to "give up" some of their identity
But what happens next generation? When a partner named ABC with two surnames should be combined with my name. Should a kid then be named DBCKS? And then it doubles every generation? Or should both parents pick one and pass on? And then which one? The father line as always?
Here in Germany, you often come across surnames that end in "-ski", which I assume come from Poland. That is also an example of getting "stuck" with a specific version of a name: in Poland, that ending would indicate that the person is male, while "-ska" would be female, and there's even one when referring to the family that shares that name: "-scy".
So whenever I meet a woman with a "-ski"-name, I wonder how many generations ago that name got stuck with just the male form.
I don't know how it worked in Sweden, but in Norway I know that one of the most common conventions was for the surname to be the farm where you were born (so my great grandfather had a different surname from his younger siblings, because the family moved). But when farmers started moving into the cities, these names were looked down on so many country people took patronymics when they moved to the cities to obscure their background.
> it was for them somewhat problematic at times that the siblings had different surnames (Björnsdottir and Björnsson), as people don't assume they're family, and especially not that the parents both had different surnames again.
I've heard similar things with certain eastern European countries (Bulgarian has different forms for males vs females: Ivanov vs Ivanova), and also with various Indian populations where the child's last name is just the father's first name.
Meanwhile I have the more mundane option where my father's first name is just my middle name.
Real patronymics were outlawed in 1923 in Norway (earlier in Denmark). Before that, naming tradition was that the given name (Erik) was the most important, and you'd add a place/farm name (Horsebay) and/or patronymic (Sigurdsson) and/or nickname (The Foot) if you needed to disambiguate. Given and patronymic were fixed, while farm names and nicknames could change over time. This works well in a local community, but made it hard for the central government to collect taxes and conscript expendables^Winfantrymen.
I know from genealogy when the patronymics "froze" in my ancestry, and also has a combination of farm names and patronymic surnames, and it's quite interesting to see how seemingly random the traditions were.
(Incidentally, one of my great-great grandfathers was Swedish and the last one in that branch to take his fathers name + son. All of his children kept his last name; my own last name comes from a farm in Norway)
Are pat/matronymic surnames still used in the Feroe Isles? As I specifically know at least one dóttir, namely Eivør Pálsdóttir (which I love listening to, especially when she sings in Faroese).
Zye! (Haitian Creole, [zjø], from French yeux [jø] “eyes”, which in French almost always occurs in liaison with a preceding [z], as in des yeux [dezjø], les yeux [lezjø], beaux yeux [bozjø], etc.)
I came here to say exactly this. Delighted that it’s the top comment (or at least it was when I saw it!). Other examples are Parry (ap Harri), and Pugh (ap Huw)
I wonder if there are similar examples from our Celtic cousins? e.g. from Mac or Mc in Scotland, or the O’… in Ireland?
Harris and Harrison are other examples of this kind of surname.
In Dublin, the bus routes are bilingual and a couple of years ago I noticed that the Irish translation of Harristown is Baile Anraí¹. When I first saw “Baile Anraí” as the destination for a passing bus, I wondered where Henry’s Town might be. I then figured that Henry and Harris must be variations of the same name and that Anraí is the Irish version of both names.
Sure enough, when I check this now, Wikipedia concurs². The article it cites states that Harry is the “Medieval English form of Henry. In modern times it is used as a diminutive of both Henry and names beginning with Har.”³
The surname Hanks may also derive from the use of Hank as a diminutive of Henry⁴
If you read the article instead of just the headline, you will find that almost all the names discussed are names people do still have. Jack, Dick, Bob, Nick, Bill, Robin, etc. are nicknames specifically called out in the article.
The article does finish with Hob, Daw, Wat, and Gib. But most of the names highlighted are ones that are still in use. (I personally also have found that a lot of people don't realize Harry is a nickname for Henry, like anyone who wasn't alive for JFK doesn't know "Jack" is "John")
I was thinking along the lines that these days “Harry” is (mostly¹) a stand-alone name and no longer used as a nickname for Henry (and this was something I only realised in the past couple of years).
Anyhow, I really enjoyed the article and learning about the origins of surnames, e.g., I didn’t know that “Peters” should be understood to be in the genitive case and I’d never have associated the surname Dixon with being “Richard’s son” – even though I’m familiar with Dick as a nickname for Richard.
¹ Other commentators have pointed out that Prince Harry was actually christened as Henry.
Here’s another interesting connection: the Italian forename Enzo is a derivative of the German name Heinz, which is a diminutive of Heinrich and cognate of the given name Henry.
I've now checked, and it was originally a form of Henry, but can now also be a diminutive form of any name beginning with Har... So we're both right : - )
Another one to add is that Japanese boys names often end -rō (-郎, "nth son")... including the very plainly named 一郎 (Ichirō, "first son"), 二郎 (Jirō, "second son"), 三郎 (Saburō, "third son"), 四郎 (Shirō "fourth son"), 五郎 (Gorō, "fifth son"), 六郎 (Rokurō, "sixth son"), 七郎 (Shichirō "seventh son"), 八郎 (Hachirō, "eighth son") and 九郎 (Kurō, "ninth son")
I don't know about Ancient Romans, but I do know a few Italian men with numbered names. In particular a Decimo (tenth), who was indeed the tenth (and I wouldn't swear the last).
I'm not sure. 4 and death just sound the same, it's more a superstition to avoid saying those numbers, like Westerners thinking 13 is unlucky. It doesn't extend to all words beginning with or containing "shi"
Also, shiro (城 castle or 白 white) is not the same as the name Shirō (e.g. 四郎 "fourth son", 志郎 "determined son"?, 史郎 "historical son"?)
One other thing that has disappeared from common use(although I have seen it done among some "higher" circles still) is using the husband's full name for the wife here in the UK.
So if you have a man called "John Bridgerton", his wife would be referred to in certain circumstances as "Mrs John Bidgerton". Like you'd get an invite to the King's Ball, and it would say:
"Hereby inviting:
Mr John Bridgerton and Mrs John Bridgerton"
Just recently I read about the etymology of the Japanese 奥さん Okusan = “your wife”
Until Japan started modernizing in the 19th century, it was considered rude to call people by their real names. If you asked your lord, “So how’s Sharon doing,” those may have been your last words.
So everyone called each other by their position names or by their nicknames if they were close, and for women in noble families or samurai families, it was usually the place they lived.
In ancient times, nobles had manors that looked like this. This is the entrance, the garden, the main building, and this building in the north of it was always the wife’s residence. So they often called her “Kita-no-kata,” the lady in the north.
Now, nobles built their houses based on a fung-shuei-like belief that Japanese shamans made everyone believe, like how rich people communities are into weird stuff, so the wife’s residence was almost always in the north.
But centuries later, in the age of samurai, priorities shifted. They were invading each other like there was nothing else to do, so they built their houses and castles with defence in mind first and foremost.
So the wife’s room wasn’t necessarily in the north anymore. So they were like, “So, how is the… umm… lady in the depths of your house?” 奥方様はいかがお過ごしですかな？
奥方様 means the lady in the depths, and it was shortened to 奥様, after the samurai age, and while 奥様 is still used now, we needed a slightly less formal version, so now if is often 奥さん. Deep-san!
Very old Americans at least still do this as well. My 100 year old grandma insists that using the wife's first name is only appropriate when the husband is deceased.
My wife has a 100 year old grandfather and he until recently followed the rule as well. His last letter he addressed to my wife specifically using her own first name. This was a strange way to learn of my own death.
A memorable occurrence in this happens in "Sense and Sensibility", Part III, Chapter XII, when Elinor Dashwood learns that the man she loved and believed had just married was in fact free:
“Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?”
“At Longstaple!” he replied, with an air of surprise. “No; my mother is in town.”
“I meant,” said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, “to enquire after Mrs. Edward Ferrars.”
She dared not look up; but her mother and Marianne both turned their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and, after some hesitation, said,—
“Perhaps you mean my brother: you mean Mrs.—Mrs. Robert Ferrars.”
A while ago, my wife and I were invited to the Royal Garden Party at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, in the presence of the late Queen. Very nice invitation in the form of Mr <me> and Mrs <me>.
As it was in recognition of my wife’s charitable works, She was not pleased at such a form of address. But we still went.
I learned about this from my mother, who, like my father, is a doctor. Invitations addressed to "Dr. and Mrs. Father Lastnames" were a source of great offense to her!
Many of the gift checks for my wedding were made out this way. It made it very inconvenient to cash them since there was not yet such a person by one of the names on those checks, and the bank wouldn't deposit them. They insisted the checks would have to say "Mr. OR Mrs." Who thinks of that when sending a wedding gift? Most annoying to me was that I had never heard of anyone having this difficulty before, but it must happen every day.
When people we know are getting married ask us for our address, I explicitly reply that we are not to be addressed in that manner (I find it somewhat insulting).
I can tell if the couple is doing addressing themselves or if they're having an older relative do it by if our instructions have been followed.
I recall encountering this in the 70's, on a Flintstones episode from the 60's where a scene referenced Mrs. Fred Flintstone and Mrs. Barney Rubble. Confused the heck out of me at a young age.
I suspect that's a reductive "just-so" story that happens to fit into some popular feminist narratives, though coming on the heels of some adjacent theories popular among men in the 18th and 19th centuries that misconstrued the legal history of coverture.
It's difficult to find credible information using Google these days, but I would guess that the giving away of the bride is a custom more tied to exogamy--the practice of marrying outside one's social group (tribe, town, etc). In cultures that practice exogamy, it's typically either the young men (male exogamy) or the women (female exogamy), but not both, who would leave the group to marry. Giving away the bride seems more about relinquishing social and familial ties in the context of female exogamy. In some cultures, e.g. traditional chinese female exogamy AFAIU, the bride and her old family (or whole clan?) were strictly forbidden to communicate after marriage.
If women were just chattel (or something approximating chattel--there's a hole spectrum in-between, and overusing "chattel" this way diminishes the gravity of actual chattel slavery, IMO) then we wouldn't expect to see dowries (the bride's family giving the new couple money and gifts), but only brideprices (the groom's family giving the bride's family money and gifts). Yet AFAIU dowries were more the norm in European culture, notwithstanding there were times, places, and contexts where brideprices also existed, exclusively or in combination. And nobody says the groom is "chattel" just because the bride's family is transferring assets.
Interestingly, while I think female exogamy was historically much more common around the world, modern American culture seems to skew toward male exogamy, at least along some dimensions. It's never discussed in those terms[1], but you can arguably see it in statistics showing how the proximity and frequency of contact with extended family skews very heavily toward the wife's family.
[1] To the extent it's discussed, it's in feminist narratives and termed "emotional labor". It's not mutually exclusive with the anthropological concept. Male/female exogamy is value neutral, and feminist discourse is just slapping a value on it, in this case a negative value.
That's reductive and insulting to the women who chose to maintain this tradition. In many cases it's a very moving and symbolic gesture, akin to a groom's dance with his mother.
If you go to a shop in a small town in America that sells used goods, you will almost certainly find a few editions of the local church cookbook. Depending on its age, it will likely refer to many of the women who submitted recipes in this manner. You could probably even date the cultural transition by comparing the books across a few decades.
Here's an exception to these general rules (first names appearing in surnames) is Peterman: you'd think it was some kind of relation to a relative named peter, but it is actually a name for a profession. A Peterman was someone tasked with finding deposits of saltpeter for the production of fertlizer and gunpower.
English has a few diminutive suffixes. Which one is used depends a lot on the shape of the word and the era, but the most common one today is -y.
So a child's toy might be Beary, and the kid might go by Johnny. We also have -ling, as in duckling, and a whole bunch of less common ones [0].
You're right, though, that we don't use our diminutives nearly as often as the Iberian languages do. If you tried to use them as much as you would in Portuguese you would definitely not sound like a native speaker, but they do exist.
Mostly they're used in the register of speech that we use when speaking to very young children (i.e. "baby talk"), in nicknames, or in older words that acquired a diminutive a long time ago and now register as just a word on their own.
-ette is still productive but collides with the female sense
-kins (I've only heard it with an s) is arguably still productive, but in very limited contexts - unlike other diminutives, it seems to only be used when an actual small baby is involved, not for mere endearment, though in this context it can be used either for the baby or for the people around the baby.
-let is still productive (applet = small app; even Aplet = candied apple is only documented a century back); only takes ordinary nouns.
-ling feels still productive, but new archetypes are rare so it's mostly used with preexisting words.
-ole and variants might be productive in science but are otherwise not even recognized.
-poo is apparently productive but not something I ever reach for
-ses I'm not convinced is actually correctly analyzed; it appears to just be a redundant plural, similar to how "bestest" is a redundant superlative
-sies is actually just -s (diminutive/filler) + -ie/-y (diminutive) + -s (plural). Usually the first -s is required for a word that ends with a vowel (but also after n (including nd/nt with the d/t weakened), m, ng, r, l, p, or b; the need for disambiguation is also relevant)
But -y/-ie remains by far the dominant diminutive. It shouldn't be confused with several other uses of the suffix though (such as with the meaning of -ish).
Influence from Romance languages is strong enough that foreign diminutives are now more common than some of the traditional English diminutives.
I think the most common diminutive in English preceding the word with the word "little". This is not a suffix but is used in much the same ways as diminutive suffixes are used in other latin languages.
"little bear" and "little johnny" would both be quite natural phrases.
For example, John -> Johnny, Tim -> Timmy, Grace -> Gracie, cat -> kitty, horse -> horsey. As far as I can think of, it can only applied to one-syllable nouns; longer words must be clipped first -- e.g. Katherine -> Kat(y|ey|ie), Tobias -> Toby, Andrew -> Andy, stomach -> tummy.
I can't think of an augmentive suffix that can be applied to names.
I'd expect augmentives for names to be rare because they're often pejorative and the opposite of endearing. I have occasionally known people whose nickname is something like "Big Fred".
In modern English, you could probably get away with a nickname like "Fredzilla".
-kin is not but via your link https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/-kins sometimes "-ikins"/"-ykins" is used, I've heard this before but can't think of any specific examples
A "bodkin," an archaic word for a small knife or sharp implement, is probably a diminutive of "bod" or dagger. A "jerkin" or a tight vest, might be a diminutive of the Dutch "jerk," (dress), but all of these words are so old it's hard to nail down their etymology. As other commenters pointed out, today's diminutive suffix is -y/-ey, used mostly for childhood nicknames and baby-talk names like horsey.
I can't say I've ever heard "kin" used in everyday English speech. The only generally recognizable example word I can think of using it is "munchkin", which either refers to certain small residents of Oz (from "The Wizard of Oz" lore) or the name Dunkin' uses for the confection more generically known as a "doughnut hole" (which if you're not familiar with it is essentially the doughy center of the doughnut removed to make the hole and in my opinion should be called something like "inverse doughnut holes", although no one else seems to feel as strongly as me about it).
I had to Google what "augmentative suffix" was; despite having taken several years of Spanish in middle school and high school and being aware of the concept, I somehow hadn't heard that term before! I don't think there's anything common for that in English; the only thing that springs to mind for me is the prefix "big-ass", which probably isn't different enough from the typical adjective used for this purpose to qualify.
Only one I can think of these days are when kids call their parents something liked 'Daddykins'. But obviously there are words where it's now part of the word in it's own right today like 'napkin' or 'catkin'
I don't think there are many cases where it's used "correctly" but it does get constructed in some cases - e.g. in Harry Potter some of Ron's brothers call him "ickle Ronniekins", which is slightly nonsense but we recognise it immediately as a maximally diminutive form of his name.
I can't think of an augmentative suffix, only prefixes (super- and things like that).
We (via French, I guess) have a mildly productive suffix "-ette" or "-et", as in cigar-ette, kitchen-ette (floret, bassinet, owlet). It doesn't imply animateness the way "-kin" does; e.g. "hotelette" or "showerette" seem like plausible coinages in a way "hotelkin" and "showerkin" don't (but I sense some cross-pollination from Japanese "-kun" messing with my interpretation of the latter). But "-ette" certainly connotes femininity: "little Ronniekins" says he's a baby, but "little Ronnette" says he's a girl.
"-y" is a quite common diminutive suffix in English nowadays. As a fun fact, Americans find hilarious/cute how Brazilians pronounce English words ending in consonants (e.g. WhatsApp/Facebook) adding an extra "i/ee/y" sound because it sounds like adding "-inho" to them!
> I didn’t know English had a diminutive suffix (-kin). Is it used still in common English?
No, at least not in the US. In American English, you'd use a modifier instead of a suffix. We have some pre-diminutized words like "oopsie", but no general-purpose suffix that you can attach to anything.
There are some _prefixes_ that you can use though. You could prepend just about anything with "micro", and people will know you mean "a small version of X".
> Also, is there an augmentative suffix as well that I don’t know about?
Also no (at least not that I can think of). Modifiers are also more common. You can also use prefixes like "Mega" as an augmentative. Depending on the word, this can be used for comic effect.
Dictionary says that pumpkin came from French pompon (large melon) and was originally pumpion. English colonists named the orange melon they discovered in New World pumpkin.
Maybe it was joke pronunciation, calling large melon small. It could be a term of endearment for favorite melon. It could be they wanted to distinguish between all large melons and this large melon. Or it could be pronunciation drifting from use.
I don't think pumpkin gets is name from the "-kin" diminutive.
Etymologyonline says: 1640s, "gourd-like fruit, of a deep orange-yellow color when ripe, of a coarse decumbent vine native to North America," an alteration of pompone, pumpion "melon, pumpkin" (1540s), from French pompon, from Latin peponem (nominative pepo) "melon," from Greek pepon "melon."
So the "n" has been on the end of the word for a long time.
In Farsi / Persian we have "-zadeh" which means child of (born from). Last names were not instituted in Persia / Iran until early 1900s and everyone got to pick their own, so there are a lot of *zadehs as it was an easy choice. So eg Hassanzadeh is child of Hassan
In the New Testament, the governor actually asks the crowd "do you want a pardon for Yeshua or Yeshua Bar Abbas", Bar Abbas meaning son of Abbas, a common naming convention. The text officially goes "do you want a pardon for Jesus or Barabbas?"
This is still used today by Jews for Hebrew names. "Bar", the Aramaic word for "son", has in Hebrew its counterpart "ben" ("bat" for women). So your Hebrew name is eg "David ben Benjamin", David son of Benjamin. This is used anywhere to address you in Hebrew, eg for bar/bat mitzvahs, calling up to give blessings in synagogue, headstones, on your ketubah (Jewish marriage license), etc
Readit News
I guess the tradition of it being the man's name passed on means that's why there is no common surnames with *dottir as it is with *son? (Not sure what the english version for a daughter is).
Had some Icelandic friends in school (which still has patronymic names, moved here after they were born), and it was for them somewhat problematic at times that the siblings had different surnames (Björnsdottir and Björnsson), as people don't assume they're family, and especially not that the parents both had different surnames again. Like school pickup with a teacher not knowing the situation.
But what happens next generation? When a partner named ABC with two surnames should be combined with my name. Should a kid then be named DBCKS? And then it doubles every generation? Or should both parents pick one and pass on? And then which one? The father line as always?
So whenever I meet a woman with a "-ski"-name, I wonder how many generations ago that name got stuck with just the male form.
I've heard similar things with certain eastern European countries (Bulgarian has different forms for males vs females: Ivanov vs Ivanova), and also with various Indian populations where the child's last name is just the father's first name.
Meanwhile I have the more mundane option where my father's first name is just my middle name.
==See also==
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconym
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_modernism#Standardized_le...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_variable
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis
(Incidentally, one of my great-great grandfathers was Swedish and the last one in that branch to take his fathers name + son. All of his children kept his last name; my own last name comes from a farm in Norway)
Deleted Comment
Also: Pratchett
"The name Pratchett was a Welsh patronymic surname created from the personal name Richard."
https://www.houseofnames.com/pratchett-family-crest
Having never heard this name before, I definitely would have to resist the urge to make an updog-style joke if I met something named this.
Somehow this is also a saner spelling with English orthography. We should probably all use this spelling.
Ex: "I found an ewt in the pocket a napron" --> "I found a newt in the pocket of an apron."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing
wiktionary says it’s from “up” + “town”
I wonder if there are similar examples from our Celtic cousins? e.g. from Mac or Mc in Scotland, or the O’… in Ireland?
In Dublin, the bus routes are bilingual and a couple of years ago I noticed that the Irish translation of Harristown is Baile Anraí¹. When I first saw “Baile Anraí” as the destination for a passing bus, I wondered where Henry’s Town might be. I then figured that Henry and Harris must be variations of the same name and that Anraí is the Irish version of both names.
Sure enough, when I check this now, Wikipedia concurs². The article it cites states that Harry is the “Medieval English form of Henry. In modern times it is used as a diminutive of both Henry and names beginning with Har.”³
The surname Hanks may also derive from the use of Hank as a diminutive of Henry⁴
¹ https://www.dublinbus.ie/getmedia/947fdcee-5f28-46e0-8785-ab...
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_(given_name)
³ https://www.behindthename.com/name/harry
⁴ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hank#Proper_noun
The article does finish with Hob, Daw, Wat, and Gib. But most of the names highlighted are ones that are still in use. (I personally also have found that a lot of people don't realize Harry is a nickname for Henry, like anyone who wasn't alive for JFK doesn't know "Jack" is "John")
Anyhow, I really enjoyed the article and learning about the origins of surnames, e.g., I didn’t know that “Peters” should be understood to be in the genitive case and I’d never have associated the surname Dixon with being “Richard’s son” – even though I’m familiar with Dick as a nickname for Richard.
¹ Other commentators have pointed out that Prince Harry was actually christened as Henry.
Male: Sextus, Septimus, Octavius, Nonus.
Female: Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, Quinta, Sexta, Octavia, Nona, and Decima
But on further investigation the males seem to actually be named after months https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zshd6h/when_...
and the women are unclear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praenomen
They are all, unsurprisingly, old :)
Or do people associate it with white?
Also, shiro (城 castle or 白 white) is not the same as the name Shirō (e.g. 四郎 "fourth son", 志郎 "determined son"?, 史郎 "historical son"?)
So if you have a man called "John Bridgerton", his wife would be referred to in certain circumstances as "Mrs John Bidgerton". Like you'd get an invite to the King's Ball, and it would say:
"Hereby inviting: Mr John Bridgerton and Mrs John Bridgerton"
Until Japan started modernizing in the 19th century, it was considered rude to call people by their real names. If you asked your lord, “So how’s Sharon doing,” those may have been your last words.
So everyone called each other by their position names or by their nicknames if they were close, and for women in noble families or samurai families, it was usually the place they lived.
In ancient times, nobles had manors that looked like this. This is the entrance, the garden, the main building, and this building in the north of it was always the wife’s residence. So they often called her “Kita-no-kata,” the lady in the north.
Now, nobles built their houses based on a fung-shuei-like belief that Japanese shamans made everyone believe, like how rich people communities are into weird stuff, so the wife’s residence was almost always in the north.
But centuries later, in the age of samurai, priorities shifted. They were invading each other like there was nothing else to do, so they built their houses and castles with defence in mind first and foremost.
So the wife’s room wasn’t necessarily in the north anymore. So they were like, “So, how is the… umm… lady in the depths of your house?” 奥方様はいかがお過ごしですかな？
奥方様 means the lady in the depths, and it was shortened to 奥様, after the samurai age, and while 奥様 is still used now, we needed a slightly less formal version, so now if is often 奥さん. Deep-san!
source: https://www.facebook.com/metroclassicjapanese/posts/the-etym...
My wife has a 100 year old grandfather and he until recently followed the rule as well. His last letter he addressed to my wife specifically using her own first name. This was a strange way to learn of my own death.
My grandmother does it too to my wife. I think the fact that they write letters is also something very old Americans still do.
“Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?”
“At Longstaple!” he replied, with an air of surprise. “No; my mother is in town.”
“I meant,” said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, “to enquire after Mrs. Edward Ferrars.”
She dared not look up; but her mother and Marianne both turned their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and, after some hesitation, said,— “Perhaps you mean my brother: you mean Mrs.—Mrs. Robert Ferrars.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IuHZPR8e5c8
As it was in recognition of my wife’s charitable works, She was not pleased at such a form of address. But we still went.
I can tell if the couple is doing addressing themselves or if they're having an older relative do it by if our instructions have been followed.
Deleted Comment
It's difficult to find credible information using Google these days, but I would guess that the giving away of the bride is a custom more tied to exogamy--the practice of marrying outside one's social group (tribe, town, etc). In cultures that practice exogamy, it's typically either the young men (male exogamy) or the women (female exogamy), but not both, who would leave the group to marry. Giving away the bride seems more about relinquishing social and familial ties in the context of female exogamy. In some cultures, e.g. traditional chinese female exogamy AFAIU, the bride and her old family (or whole clan?) were strictly forbidden to communicate after marriage.
If women were just chattel (or something approximating chattel--there's a hole spectrum in-between, and overusing "chattel" this way diminishes the gravity of actual chattel slavery, IMO) then we wouldn't expect to see dowries (the bride's family giving the new couple money and gifts), but only brideprices (the groom's family giving the bride's family money and gifts). Yet AFAIU dowries were more the norm in European culture, notwithstanding there were times, places, and contexts where brideprices also existed, exclusively or in combination. And nobody says the groom is "chattel" just because the bride's family is transferring assets.
Interestingly, while I think female exogamy was historically much more common around the world, modern American culture seems to skew toward male exogamy, at least along some dimensions. It's never discussed in those terms[1], but you can arguably see it in statistics showing how the proximity and frequency of contact with extended family skews very heavily toward the wife's family.
[1] To the extent it's discussed, it's in feminist narratives and termed "emotional labor". It's not mutually exclusive with the anthropological concept. Male/female exogamy is value neutral, and feminist discourse is just slapping a value on it, in this case a negative value.
That's reductive and insulting to the women who chose to maintain this tradition. In many cases it's a very moving and symbolic gesture, akin to a groom's dance with his mother.
... until I started looking for Mrs. Sidney Rauh ...
A partial documentation is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltpetre_works
A better narrative of this industry is in Ed Conway's book "Material World" https://edconway.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-material-worl...
* "Dob" is another old nickname for "Robert", giving us "Dobson";
* "Dodge" another nickname for Roger, hence Dodgson, as in Louis Carrol's real name, Charles Dodgson;
* "Tibb" is an old nickname for Theobald, giving surnames like "Tibbs" and "Tibbets";
* "Hud" for "Hugh", giving us the Hudsons.
We have it Portuguese (-inho/-inha) and I find them so useful. It always seemed a missing feature of English.
Also, is there an augmentative suffix as well that I don’t know about?
So a child's toy might be Beary, and the kid might go by Johnny. We also have -ling, as in duckling, and a whole bunch of less common ones [0].
You're right, though, that we don't use our diminutives nearly as often as the Iberian languages do. If you tried to use them as much as you would in Portuguese you would definitely not sound like a native speaker, but they do exist.
Mostly they're used in the register of speech that we use when speaking to very young children (i.e. "baby talk"), in nicknames, or in older words that acquired a diminutive a long time ago and now register as just a word on their own.
[0] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_diminutive...
-kins (I've only heard it with an s) is arguably still productive, but in very limited contexts - unlike other diminutives, it seems to only be used when an actual small baby is involved, not for mere endearment, though in this context it can be used either for the baby or for the people around the baby.
-let is still productive (applet = small app; even Aplet = candied apple is only documented a century back); only takes ordinary nouns.
-ling feels still productive, but new archetypes are rare so it's mostly used with preexisting words.
-ole and variants might be productive in science but are otherwise not even recognized.
-poo is apparently productive but not something I ever reach for
-ses I'm not convinced is actually correctly analyzed; it appears to just be a redundant plural, similar to how "bestest" is a redundant superlative
-sies is actually just -s (diminutive/filler) + -ie/-y (diminutive) + -s (plural). Usually the first -s is required for a word that ends with a vowel (but also after n (including nd/nt with the d/t weakened), m, ng, r, l, p, or b; the need for disambiguation is also relevant)
But -y/-ie remains by far the dominant diminutive. It shouldn't be confused with several other uses of the suffix though (such as with the meaning of -ish).
Influence from Romance languages is strong enough that foreign diminutives are now more common than some of the traditional English diminutives.
Also, I'll often refer to my child as "kidling" or "childling". English can be a fun language to play in.
Q: Where does a general keep his armies?
A: In his sleevies!
"little bear" and "little johnny" would both be quite natural phrases.
grey + Maude + kin = grimalkin.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/merkin
For example, John -> Johnny, Tim -> Timmy, Grace -> Gracie, cat -> kitty, horse -> horsey. As far as I can think of, it can only applied to one-syllable nouns; longer words must be clipped first -- e.g. Katherine -> Kat(y|ey|ie), Tobias -> Toby, Andrew -> Andy, stomach -> tummy.
I can't think of an augmentive suffix that can be applied to names.
In modern English, you could probably get away with a nickname like "Fredzilla".
I had to Google what "augmentative suffix" was; despite having taken several years of Spanish in middle school and high school and being aware of the concept, I somehow hadn't heard that term before! I don't think there's anything common for that in English; the only thing that springs to mind for me is the prefix "big-ass", which probably isn't different enough from the typical adjective used for this purpose to qualify.
I can't think of an augmentative suffix, only prefixes (super- and things like that).
No, at least not in the US. In American English, you'd use a modifier instead of a suffix. We have some pre-diminutized words like "oopsie", but no general-purpose suffix that you can attach to anything.
There are some _prefixes_ that you can use though. You could prepend just about anything with "micro", and people will know you mean "a small version of X".
> Also, is there an augmentative suffix as well that I don’t know about?
Also no (at least not that I can think of). Modifiers are also more common. You can also use prefixes like "Mega" as an augmentative. Depending on the word, this can be used for comic effect.
"an awkward, simple, unsophisticated person from a rural area" (dictionary.com)
Some places sell munchkins (little donuts)
and we send our 4-5 yr old children to Kindergarden
but we dont stick it to the end of words like inho/inha in portuguese or ito/ita in spanish
Not at all, really only in words 'munchkin', 'napkin', or 'pumpkin'.
Ling's another. Both diminuitive but slightly differently.
pumpkin
Though now I think about it, it's very odd diminutive. Pumpkins are large rather than small.
Maybe it was joke pronunciation, calling large melon small. It could be a term of endearment for favorite melon. It could be they wanted to distinguish between all large melons and this large melon. Or it could be pronunciation drifting from use.
Etymologyonline says: 1640s, "gourd-like fruit, of a deep orange-yellow color when ripe, of a coarse decumbent vine native to North America," an alteration of pompone, pumpion "melon, pumpkin" (1540s), from French pompon, from Latin peponem (nominative pepo) "melon," from Greek pepon "melon."
So the "n" has been on the end of the word for a long time.
[1] Podcast 110 https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2018/04/07/episode-110-d...
[2] Podcast 133 https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2020/01/21/episode-133-b...
Deleted Comment