Do You Know Ten English Family Name Meanings? - Ten Popular Jobs - And Statues To See

 It is easier to remember people's names if you recall the jobs which the names mean, probably a job held by their ancestor, or even their ancestor's boss. I have at least one book about family names, and several about first names.

Names associated with jobs

1 Archer (like author Jeffrey Archer), 

2 baker

3 barber

4 bishop

5 carpenter - made wooden items, spoons, furniture, housing

6 carter (who drove carts or maybe made carts)

7 clark  (clarkson was the son of a clerk, writer come secretary, or maybe a religious cleric)

8 Cook or cokson meaning son of a cook

9 cooper - maker of barrels

You can see a stue of comedian Tommy Cooper in Wales near Caerphilly Castle. More details in Wikipedia.

Statue of comedian Cooper near Caerphilly castle, seen in the background, in Wales. More details in Wikipedia.

10 draper made drapes or curtains

11 gardener or gardiner - worked in gardens

That is more than ten, but there are many more.

glazer - person who makes windows

knight - roade around on a horse

Lee means shelter in English, and in Chinese Lee or Li means plum tree

Statue of Bruce Lee in Hong Kong. Photo in Wikipedia.

miller - ground corn at a mill

Priestley - priest's woodland clearing, owned by the church. A common name in Yorkshire in England, and Scotland in the UK, also the USA and Canada. See the statues of Priestley the scientist in Yorkshire. See the statue of author-playwright J B Priestley whose time-slip play An Inspector Calls is used by many schools for English O level exams.

Statue of J B Priestley in Bradford, Yorkshire.

shepherd - looked after or herded sheep

smith - usually blacksmith, since a silversmith would be called silver, or silverman, and a goldsmith or person working wiht or selling gold bards or gold jewelery and items might be called gold or goldman

tailor/taylor- sewed by hand, later by machine (as in Elizabeth Taylor the film star)

Bust of Taylor in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Another Believer - Own work

Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico (2021)

thatcher - who created thatch or thatched roofs, made of bundles or dried straw, before clay was dried and made into tiles (as in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher). A statue of Margaret Thatcher is in Grangham, Lincolnshire, England. A bust of her is outdoors in the Falkland Islands, in the capital, Stanley.

Statue of Margaret Thatcher in England.

weaver - wove textiles

wheeler - made and repaired wheels for wagons

woodman - worked with wood, or in the woods

You an buy books about statues, such as London statues (I have that one) and on surnames (I have one of those, ) and on baby names (I started collecting books on baby names when my son was born  more than 40 years ago and I now have more than ten books on baby names. Magazines on Parents and babies often give away books on baby names with their springtime editions. Some first names are derived from names of parents. 

Useful Website

ancestry.com (I tried loading up the link but it wiped out the entire post, so I have just given you the generic name. Add name meaning.)

https://www.oxfordreference.com

wikipedia.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inspector_Calls

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How To Read German When Travelling and Travelling Around The Internet. Also Swiss, Austrian and French areas which speak German

I just tried to credit a photographer with a German name (Petermueller12) for his photo. His first name must be Peter.

I knew that the English surname Miller translates into Muller with an accent above the U in German. I did not know the spelling mueller but guessed it was a variation or dialect.

Wikipedia says this:

The German word Müller means "miller" (as a profession). It is the most common family surname in Germany, Switzerland, and the French départements of Bas-Rhin and Moselle (with the spelling Müller, Mueller or Muller) and is the fifth most common surname in Austria (see List of most common surnames in Europe).

I thought that the most common name must be the translation of the British most common name, Smith, which becomes Schmidt. Never mind. I now know two easy to remember words and surnames in German. Words which make surnames. Surnames which remind you of words.

I linked back to his page but got a German message. It started:

Diese Benutzerseite existiert noch nicht.

Nicht is not. It was clearly saying this page no longer exists. I looked at the words and tried to decipher them. At school I learned French and Latin and have never learned German, although I completed the Duolingo German first course on my laptop and mobile phone. The Duolingo course is free.

Today, from the text  I could easily recogninize these words:

German - English
bitte - please
diese - this

Du - you (Like tu in French. If it helps, think f the phrase Do you? Du is German for you.)

existiert - exist
kannst - can
Kontakt - contact
kurz - short
mit - with
mueller - miller/surname Miller
neu - new (The first two letters of both English and German are the same. U and w (double u) are similar.)

Smith - Schmidt
und - and

wenn - when/if




English - German
and - und
can - kannst
contact - Kontakt
exist - existiert
miller - mueller / Müller
new - neu
please - bitte
short - kurz
smith (as in black smith)  Smith - Schmidt
This - diese (sounds a bit like like these)
when/if - wenn
with - mit
you - du

I first translated the entire paragraph from German into English to get whole sentences which made sense.

German Grammar
German sentences, as well as Japanese sentences, end with the verb or doing word or action word. Tha last word in a sentence is English as well  is most memorable and should be the word for emphasis.

English sentences are structured noun (subject), verb, object, for short SVO. German and Japanese and other languages are structured Subject Oject, Verb (for short SOV).

I am compiling this post in my coffee breaks from work and will come back later. You, too, come back later to see more.

Angela Lansbury

Aspiring polyglot.

Benutzer:Petermueller12

Zur Navigation springenZur Suche springen

Diese Benutzerseite existiert noch nicht.

Wikipedia stellt jedem angemeldeten Benutzer eine Benutzerseite zur Verfügung, um sich kurz vorzustellen.

• Wenn du Benutzer Petermueller12 bist und dich angemeldet hast, dann kannst du diese Seite über den Reiter „Erstellen“ neu anlegen.
• Um Kontakt mit Petermueller12 aufzunehmen, schreibe eine Nachricht auf der Benutzerdiskussionsseite.

Falls du diese Seite bereits gerade erstellt hast, kann es sein, dass die Aktualisierung der Datenbank verzögert wurde. Bitte erstelle die Seite nicht nochmals neu, sondern warte ein bisschen und lade diese Seite erneut.

I received this translation from Google and made a list of the individual words English to German and German to English.

This user page does not yet exist.

Wikipedia provides every registered user with a user page to introduce themselves briefly.

If you are user Petermueller12 and have logged in, you can create a new page using the "Create" tab.
To get in contact with Petermueller12, write a message on the user discussion page.
If you've just created this page, the database update may have been delayed. Please do not create the page again, but wait a little and reload this page.


Then I took the time and trouble to translate word by word, simply starting a new line after each German word.

Useful Websites

translate google

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_expressions_in_English

duolingo.com

About the Author

Angela Lansbury Aspiring polyglot. Travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Books set in your destination

Pick the plot's landmarks by choosing your destination. Benjamin Disraeli (The British Prime Minister in the Victorian era, not his father Isaac Disraeli) said, when I want to read a book I write one. If you want the illusion of creating your own book, here's the solution.

Travellers often pick up guidebooks about the destination from the airport or on the ferry, but what about fiction? Some destinations are obvious places to buy books set there. For example, in the UK, a book by the Brontes when visiting the Bronte museum in Haworth, Yorkshire in the north of England. I bought Withering Heights by Emily Bronte, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and the novel by Anne Bronte. Many homes in the area are places featuring in the novels or were homes of the Brontes or their friends. Dickens features many landmarks. You can do walking tours of London and see sites connected with famous authors, then read the books.

I often visit homes of famous authors. Or pick up the children's or adult's book set in the local area. In Australia I bought Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by their best selling author May Gibbs after visiting a museum about the author and the illustrations of Australian plants.

In the USA I bought books by Arthur Miller, Hemingway, Edgar Allen Poe, and Jack London.

But now here's a new concept. The book which you change by slipping in your location.

The idea of audience interaction dates back a long time. At the Canadian Expo in the sixties you could watch a performance of a play in which the audience voted. So if there were four times when you could vote there were - was it sixteen variations? I'll have to get a mathematics expert to help me on this one. Yes, my tame statistician confirms there are sixteen variations.

Now there's a pioneering story which changes the plot to include local landmarks in major cities. I'd like to change all my books to happy endings. Surprise endings and happy endings. I may not be with the majority on this. Women's magazines require short stories to have happy endings. But films and novels are different.

I think it was one of the great American novels by Hemingway, later made into a film, where studio audiences were shown two variation and asked to vote. To the surprise of the film producers the audiences chose the sad ending. More realistic? The Chinese like classic works to show grim reality. Not me. But I do like local landmarks on my literature.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3172264/Is-ultimate-holiday-read-New-travel-book-uses-GPS-adapt-plot-include-nearby-landmarks.html