Marilyn Tassy wrote:Wish we had a few "Freds" in the family.
Try these tongue twisters...Athanasius, Onuphrey and Anisia.
Sounds more like Latin names for drugs rather then real names someone would actually give a child!
Yes, these come from my family tree, thankfully they have all passed on and I don't have to look the fool trying to pronounce their given names!
Actually names for drugs are often a mix of Greek and Latin (as is the word "television" for example). and often called hybrid words and used to be frowned upon by prescriptivist grammarians sucha s H. W. Fowler.
Plant names tend to have rather sexy names because Carl Linne, (the linnean system of classification) was a bit sex-obsessed so he named orchids as the Greek for testicles for example.
Yes Athanasius does sound like a plant though, about like Narcissus (no hang on he was definitely Greek) and Anisia presumably is the plant that gives us aniseed (yeah, I know, I know...)
Onuphrey I have no idea, that sounds more Old English to me. Corruption of Humphrey perhaps, but I am just guessing there. My Mum's side of the family emigrated from Germany to England before the First World War although the surname is vaguely Jewish but obviously nothing to do with running away from hitler (wrong war) and don't think there is any Jewish in the family although the Surname is typical Jewish one in Germany. (The surname got anglicised and is not my one, but I dare not give it as there are living members of that branch of the family, not that Hitler is coming back except daily on the Yesterday Channel, but that is not my prerogative as we discussed). I am often mistaken in Hungary for being German, I suppose because of my light colouring (going nicely grey/gray what is left of it, salt-and-pepper beard) so THAT helps... I say sorry I am not German please speak in Hungarian... I know a few words of German from the stuff in ALDI and Lidl (and OBI etc) but that is about it...
The motto of my local council in Cambridgeshire, South Cambridgeshire District Council, is "niet zonder arbeit", the family slogan of Cornelius Vermuyden who came over from Holland to England in the 18th century to drain the Fens after doing the same with all the dykes in Holland. It does sound suspiciously Nazi, doesn't it, but means "Nothing without Work" and is Dutch not German.. tax bills from the local council used to arrive with NOTHING WITHOUT WORK on the postmark - thanks very much