How do you remember the names of your doctor or dentist, client or customer? Sometimes the name is easier to remember if you picture the work, building or personality. For example, I remember that my publisher was Cassell, German for castle. The first three letters of Castle and Cassell are the same The le at the end in castle is reversed to make Cassell.
It is much easier to remember the name of a friend you meet when travelling if you recall the meaning of the name and the person or name's country of origin. Some names are very popular.
I boarded a plane from Heathrow in London to India and in the queue (Americans say line-up) I started talking to a man named Mr Patel. Patel is a very common Indian name. I had had a pupil called Patel learning English from me when I was a home tutor and travelled to her home in Wembley, London.
When we arrived at Delhi, I saw him at the airport and waved goodbye, saying, "Hello again, Mr Patel," and, "Goodbye, Mr Patel."
He exclaimed,
"You remembered my name? That's wonderful!"
If you don't already know the stranger's name, you can ask its origin. You make an immediate connection with the person you are talking to, and you remember their name.
I asked a girl in a shop in London what her name meant. It was Urdu for silver. We looked up her name to confirm this when I got home. For years I will remember that her name was silver in Urdu.
I shall look at names from the following languages or countries, alphabetically, to make it easier for me to compile, for me and you to refer back, and for you as a reader to jump to what interests you most, but English first as for English speakers and readers it is the map to the other names:
These are the languages I shall cover:
England/English, Arabic, Chinese, Christian, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Jewish, Muslim, Portuguese, Spanish.
I looked up the name of somebody who was a friend of mine on Facebook to see what that told me about his nationality, country of origin, religion and language. His first name was Solomon, which is English and means peace. Another of his names was Shalom which is Hebrew for peace. A third name was Ghanaian.
If you check people with the same surname it usually doesn't tell you much, except when all the people of the same name are from the same country, that confirms the language spoken by them or their ancestors or their nationality or their ancestors' nationality.
Let's start with the English ones. I chose to look at names of work or profession, colours, and emotions or hopes or qualities. Some obvious ones, obvious once they are pointed out, are:
ENGLISH First names and Surnames
The most common surname is Smith
Smith (a person who worked as a blacksmith).
The others, in alphabetical order, are:
Angela - female first name, angel or messenger
Baker (makes bread)
Banister - basket maker, from French (As in Roger Banister, ran the first four minute mile)
Baxter - baker
Black (black hair or blacksmith)
Blue
Butler - in charge of wine, or the household
Carpenter/Carpender (works with wood, furniture maker)
Chambers - worked in the master's chambers or rooms
Chandler - candle maker or seller
Chapman - merchant, buyer, seller
Cheeseman - maker or seller of cheese
Clark or Clarke - scholar, secretary, scribe, educated person
Cook (worked as a cook)
Cooper (person who makes barrels)
Cowell - Smith, from Jewish, Polish, Serbian
Cramer - merchant (later of small items), from Kramer, Dutch or German
Cutler - maker of cutlery
Dane/Dene - valley
Dyer - person who dyes cloth
Faber - smith (from Latin)
Falconer/Faulkner - trainer of falcons
Farmer (works on the land)Glover - seller of gloves
Gold (Goldsmith)
Granger - collector of rents and taxes on a farm
Green
Hooper - builder of barrels (like cooper)
Knight
Marshall - horse servant or lover of horses - from French cheval meaning horse
Mason - stonemason, or from Aramaic toma for Thomas meaning twin
Miller - works as a miller, grinding corn for bread flour in a windmill
Silver (Silversmith)
Son on the end of a name means son of, hence: Benson, Clarkson, Davison, Ericson, Harrison, Jackson, Johnson, Morrison, Richardson, Robertson, Tomson, Williamson
White
Now let's take
ARABIC
Abdul - servant or slave
Ali - high one
Amir - prince
Dawood (David)
Hakim - wise
Mohammed/Mahammad (and other spellings) - named after the prophet, meaning the praised one
Omar - long-lived
ARAMAIC
Aramaic was the language in the era of Jesus and Roman occupation of what became Palestine and Israel. Aramaic is the origin of Arabic and Hebrew. Aramaic is still spoken today. Also used in the wording of the Jewish marriage document the ketubah, given to a bride to guarantee her moral legitimacy and legal right to financial support.)
Bar - son of, as in Bar Kochba
Barthelemy/Berti - ploughman
Beth - house (Bethany - house of poverty)
Martha/Marty/Mattie/Patty - lady
Mason - from toma meaning twin
Samantha - listens well
Thomas/Tommy/Tom - twin
BOSNIA-HERZGOVINA
BRAZILIAN (See Portuguese)
Flag of Singapore.
CHINESE
The two most common surnames are Wang and Li.
Common surnames are Lee or Koh, Li, Lim.
See my previous posts on Chinese names and language.
An - peace
Chen - great (common surname in Taiwan, about ten percent)
Feng - wind
Fu - wealthy
Hai - sea (as in Shang Hai)
Hui - wisdom
Lee - plum
Li - strength
Liang - bright
On - peace (male)
Mei - plum/beautiful
Ming - bright
Shan - mountain
Shan Shan - mountains (Doubling a word is plural in Malay and Chinese)
Wang, Wong, Ong - king
CHRISTIAN
Christian
Christine
Charity
Faith
Hope
Jesus
John
Johnson (son of John)
Kris
Luke
Mark
Mary
Mathew
Christian Catholic, Ireland
Mary
Teresa
Christian Protestant, Northern Ireland
Elizabeth
CROATIA
CZECH
Bela - white
Reznik - butcher
DANISH
Christiansen - son of Christian
Flag of The Netherlands
DUTCH
Bakker - baker
Bosman(s) - woodman
Boer - farmer
Brouwer - brewer (of beer)
Cuyper - cooper, maker of barrels
De Kok - cook
Geduld - peace, calm
Jan - John
Leeman -tenant
Van - from/of
Wagner - wagon driver
Wit - white
Flag of France
FRENCH
Blanc - white
Chevalier - works with horses (cheval - horse)
Courvoisier - shoe maker (from Cordova)
Fournier - baker (fire tender)
Jean (Make name, French for John, pronounced zho(n)/sho(n), usually combined with another name, such as Jean-Claud)
LeBlanc - the white (one)
Marie (Christian, Catholic, female forename, usually combined with another name such as Marie-Antoinette)
Masson - stone worker
Vert - green (As in Jacques Vert, clothes brand, named after the founder)
GERMAN (also spoken in Austria and Switzerland)
Adler - eagle
Bauer - farmer, peasant
Cassell - castle
Eisenhauer - iron hewer
Fischer - catcher or seller of fish (fourth most common name in Germany)
Fleischman/Fleischmann - butcher (flesh man) (also Yiddish which has a large German vocabulary)
Gaertner/Gartner - gardener
Hausman - householder
Hofman - steward
Houtman - woodman
Kaufmann - merchant
Kesselman - kettle man, coppersmith
Klemperer - tinker
Koch - cook
Koehler - maker of charcoal from wood
Krämer - merchant
Kravits - potter or tavern keeper
Lerner - student/scholar
Mahler - painter, usually of stained glass
Müller - miller (also used in Austria, France, Switzerland)
GHANAIAN
Ofori (family name)
Flag of India
HINDI/Indian
Ivan - gift of God
HUNGARIAN
Katona - soldier
HEBREW
Ben - son of (as in Ben Gurion PM of Israel, Ben Hur in film/movie)
Beth - house
Dan - surname from tribe of Dan in the book of Genesis in the Bible (known to Christians as the Old Testament)
El - God (as in Elijah, Elizabeth)
INDIAN
Mohan
Patel
Flag of Italy.
ITALIAN
Ferrari (as in the cars)/Ferraro(as in the chocolates - worker in iron, or blacksmith
Magnani - locksmith
Maria
Verdi - green
Flag of Japan
JAPANESE
akiko - first name for girl, meaning autumn child
Annya - peace and sustenance
Gen - spring
Gin - silver
Gina - silvery
Hana - flower
Megumi - blessing/grace/love/beauty (depending on the Japanese characters)
Noriko
The ending syllable, or suffix, ko, as in Akiko, Noriko, at the end of a Japanese first name indicates a child (female)
Chi, meaning one, on the end of a name means first born child. (One, two, three, four is: ichi ni san shi)
JEWISH
(See also German and Russian and Yiddish)
Cohen meaning priest. (A religious Cohen cannot currently, 2020, marry a divorced woman, so on a dating site, a man named Cohen might start asking what seem personal questions. That is why.)
Lerner - student or scholar
Shlomo (short for Solomon which is from the Hebrew for peace)
Solomon
Taylor (works as a tailor)
KOREAN
Dan - end, red, stairs
MUSLIM (See Arabic)
Kogan (and Cogan as in singer Alma Cogan?) - Russian variation of Cohen meaning priest
Flag of Portugal
PORTUGUESE
Angelo (male first name) - messenger
Marco/Marquez - from Mars, God of war, from which we get the month of March
SCOTTISH
Macpherson - son of the parson
SERBIA
SLOVENIA
Flag of Spain.
SPANISH (and Venezuelan) (Portuguese words are often the same)
Amadeo - loves God (remember Latin, amo, amas, amat, the first verb you learn, I love, you love, he, she or it loves, deus god,)
Anton - Anthony
Carlos - charles
Chico - boy
Cipriano - from Cyprus
Cortez - Curtis
Cristiano - Christian
Cristofer - Christopher
Cruz - cross
Dante - enduring
Diego - James
Domingo - born on Sunday
Eduardo - Edward
Jesus
Mayor - older (son), chief or superior
Rivera (as in the name of painter Diego Rivera) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Rivera is a surname of Spanish and Italian origin which was the old spelling of ribera, the Spanish word for "riverbank".
Rivera is also a northern Italian variation of the mostly Sicilian surname "Ribera".
The distinguished surname Rivero is a proud sign of a rich and ancient ancestry. The name was originally derived from the Castilian word "rivera," which means "riverbank." Thus it is quite probable that the first families to take on Rivero as a surname lived near the banks of a river.
See Diego Rivera murals in detroit, his home in Mexico city which he shared with Freda Kahlo and where his friend and guest/lodger Trotsky was killed. See Trotsky and Rivera memorials.
UKRAINIAN
Kravets - tailor
VENEZUELAN (Spanish)
Jesus
Flag of Wales with Welsh dragon
WELSH
Dylan - son of the sea
Evans - son of Evan, Ifan, John. Ab Evan meaning from Evan led to the name Bevan
Jones - son of John or Ioan
Lowri - Laura
Megan - Margaret
Owen - young warrior
Trevor - village
Vaughan - small
YIDDISH
(See also German, Russian)
Adler - eagle (German)
Kesselman - kettle man or kettle maker, coppersmith (copper smith)
Mayor - from first name, a nickname meaning enlightener, from meyer German meaning light.
Yehudi - praise
I shall add to these later, as I have time. I am gathering more by asking friends on Facebook on my home page and the Polyglot page.
Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Occupational_surnames
Duolingo.com
Learn languages for free on the internet with Duolingo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic
https://adoption.com/baby-names/origin/Aramaic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_Japanese_surnames
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megumi
https://adoption.com/baby-names/origin/japanese
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_(name)
About the Author
Angela Lansbury is a travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
See later post on Names from different nationalities, Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese. Please save links and share them with your family, friends and colleagues and customers.
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