Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant. It's just the two
Speaker 1: of us, kind of like old time soun Chuck sure,
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you should It's not the full
Speaker 1: thing without Jerry. That's right. But you said you're Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: don't you mean Josh Clerk. Yeah, that is what my
Speaker 1: my name is from. It's one of the most boring
Speaker 1: names you could have, but it is my last name.
Speaker 1: And that's what we're talking about. I don't even know
Speaker 1: my I mean, I know the like country of origin
Speaker 1: and stuff for Bryant, but I don't really know. Like
Speaker 1: this is one of those episodes where I was constantly going, oh,
Speaker 1: that's where that came from. Oh, that's interesting, but I
Speaker 1: didn't have anything for me. I have something for you, friend.
Speaker 1: You got the origin of Bryant, No origin of Wayne. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's hear it. It denotes a driver or builder of wagons.
Speaker 1: That's you, buddy in a nutshell, Well that was my surname. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean it still works for your middle name
Speaker 1: is sound like it just loses all meaning when it
Speaker 1: gets moved to the middle. Right, builder wagons, it's me
Speaker 1: or driver. You could have been a driver to truck
Speaker 1: wagon or or a double trouble a builder driver of wagons. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's that's it. But we're not talking about middle names.
Speaker 1: We're never really talking about first names. We're talking about surnames,
Speaker 1: which if you've ever been confused about which one that is,
Speaker 1: it's the last name, it's the family name. Yes, And
Speaker 1: depending on where you live in the world, it might
Speaker 1: come before your first name, it might come after it.
Speaker 1: There might be a couple of surnames involved, there may
Speaker 1: be a hyphen joining them. Um, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different things you can do with surnames. And like you,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, there's actually a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: stuff to this, So good pick, and thanks to the
Speaker 1: grabster for helping us out. Yeah, and you know Ed
Speaker 1: will feature later on because I don't want to spoil
Speaker 1: it yet. But his last name is interesting because this
Speaker 1: Polish and Polish names are generally interesting and how they're
Speaker 1: and how they look on paper on the page and
Speaker 1: are often changed. So we're just we're gonna float that
Speaker 1: out there as a teaser. We're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: Ed's last name and speaking of being on paper. I
Speaker 1: thought it was a polished name all this time. Glad
Speaker 1: you said something first. Uh. The deal with surnames, though,
Speaker 1: is they have been around a lot less long. That's
Speaker 1: one way to say it than a given name or
Speaker 1: a first name. Like first names, they came first, like
Speaker 1: from the beginnings of people, like with Took Took. People
Speaker 1: wanted to call each other things, and so people would
Speaker 1: just give each other names. But surnames were invented much
Speaker 1: much much later for reasons we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: kind of around Dish the eleventh century. Yeah, that's for
Speaker 1: like England, Western Europe. Um. There were places where they
Speaker 1: came along much earlier, like I think in China they've
Speaker 1: been in use for three thousand years as far as
Speaker 1: we can tell. And then in Rome there were different
Speaker 1: naming conventions that had two names, sometimes three names, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand years ago. So yeah, surnames are
Speaker 1: in England at least or the Western Europe. Uh, they
Speaker 1: are definitely latecomers, is relatively speaking. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons, uh, you might think, like why
Speaker 1: would you need a surname, and there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of reasons, um, one of which, like one of the
Speaker 1: earliest reasons was that people, you know, there were more
Speaker 1: people being born, and so your little quaint town that
Speaker 1: had you know, John and in Jane everyone who John
Speaker 1: and Jane were. But then as more and more people
Speaker 1: are born, that town gets bigger and bigger. There's more
Speaker 1: John's and Jane's. It was literally just like a way
Speaker 1: to differentiate people, yeah, exactly. And then also as people
Speaker 1: started to travel more, um there there that also kind
Speaker 1: of called for people that differentiate themselves a little bit too. So, um,
Speaker 1: population pressure is a really good reason, a really good
Speaker 1: explainer for why there were such things as surnames. Why
Speaker 1: they came along. There's just more people, so you needed
Speaker 1: to be able to say no, not Jane, that Jane,
Speaker 1: the other Jane. People got really sick of doing that,
Speaker 1: especially if a third Jane came along, they just pull
Speaker 1: their hair out and be mad all the time. Right.
Speaker 1: And then by the time people own property or had
Speaker 1: like legal things to transfer to one another, titles and
Speaker 1: things like that, then you had to have surtinnames. So uh, nobles,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, there's you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: class that plays into this because a certain class of
Speaker 1: people were landowners and had official titles. So these nobles
Speaker 1: adopted these surnames, or maybe the monarchs that you have
Speaker 1: to have a surname because we need to know your
Speaker 1: you know, the rights of succession of your land or
Speaker 1: you know, it's just gotta all legally check out. So
Speaker 1: we just being John isn't enough anymore. Yeah, it was. Um,
Speaker 1: it's strange to think of, but naming somebody and like saying,
Speaker 1: either choose a name or I'm going to choose one
Speaker 1: for you. It was a way for the ruling class
Speaker 1: of a civilization to like basically track people, keep them
Speaker 1: in line, keep you know, one group from you know,
Speaker 1: marrying another group, and consolidating power. Um. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because they think that, you know, in China, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why uh they surnames came along three thousand
Speaker 1: years ago was because of population pressure, but also because
Speaker 1: the Zoo dynasty. And I'm probably not saying that correctly.
Speaker 1: I think it's z h O. You is that right?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with yao. I'm just kidna. I'm feeling
Speaker 1: a little spicy today. I thought it was h A
Speaker 1: O or am I thinking of something different? Okay? So
Speaker 1: even more I'm going with Jao okay. But anyway, the
Speaker 1: Joo dynasty was saying, um, like, you know, we want
Speaker 1: to keep track of you nobles, and a good way
Speaker 1: to do that is to like label something. That's how
Speaker 1: you keep track of something. And that's that's one of
Speaker 1: the other reasons why these um surnames came along in
Speaker 1: China and the same thing played out um you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand years later in England for basically
Speaker 1: the same reasons. That's right, by the way, I was wrong.
Speaker 1: It is the h O wor I'm sorry, oh you okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with jaw then. Okay, are you talking
Speaker 1: about William the First Yeah, the Conqueror and his Doomsday book, which, boy,
Speaker 1: if there was ever a book that was mistitled, it's
Speaker 1: not Doomsday. It's Domesday D O M E S D
Speaker 1: A Y. But when you look at it very you
Speaker 1: just want to say doomsday book. Yeah, But what it
Speaker 1: was it was just a survey of land and landowners
Speaker 1: and tight six and William the First commission this thing
Speaker 1: and basically said, all right, we got a book now,
Speaker 1: so all these informal names aren't going to do it,
Speaker 1: so we have to have an official historical record of
Speaker 1: this stuff, So pick a surname. Yeah. It was almost
Speaker 1: like taking a snapshot of like the conventions and the
Speaker 1: customs of naming people at the time, because William the
Speaker 1: Conqueror didn't say, you know, you have to have a
Speaker 1: surname now. It was more like whatever you go by,
Speaker 1: you're going to go down in this book as that
Speaker 1: and that basically solidified and created that tradition of passing
Speaker 1: down surnames. From that point on, it kind of like
Speaker 1: kept it going. What is so funny? I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to think, do you want to be John the a
Speaker 1: hole the rest of your life? Exactly? That's what you're
Speaker 1: known as around town. But if you have a chance
Speaker 1: or to rewrite things, Yeah, and if you go back
Speaker 1: and look, there's a a website that uh that um
Speaker 1: ed found. I'll try to find it later, but it's
Speaker 1: basically just uh, a tittering tour through medieval England and
Speaker 1: some of the horrific last names people got saddled with
Speaker 1: for nicknames and that became like their last name like
Speaker 1: stuff we just can't even possibly say on this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, Ed points out too, and um, just since
Speaker 1: we're talking about that, that sarcasm is not a recent invention.
Speaker 1: So you might be uh called something like you maybe
Speaker 1: John Goodman, Well not John Gidman. You could be John Goodman.
Speaker 1: I'm just going with John for everything. Uh, when you
Speaker 1: were like a very like not nice dude, somebody might
Speaker 1: have said Goodman as a good man. Yeah, as a
Speaker 1: sort of a nod and a wink or a joke
Speaker 1: or a play on words. Like imagine if John Goodman
Speaker 1: were basically like Russell Crowe gets the point across, he's
Speaker 1: still on Wrestle Crew. I'm I'm trying to throw back here, man,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to bring everybody back to our period of
Speaker 1: comfort rather than moving along with everyone else. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting you mentioned medieval the medieval period because the Roman
Speaker 1: system that you talked about, which eventually evolved to a
Speaker 1: three name system. I think at first, or I guess,
Speaker 1: before Rome, in different civilizations they had single names. But
Speaker 1: then the Romans came along and they had what was
Speaker 1: called a prey I guess prey Noman, which would be
Speaker 1: the equivalent of a given name. Then the Noman which
Speaker 1: what we would think of as the last name, and
Speaker 1: then later on, if you were like an elite, you
Speaker 1: would have a third name, the cognomen uh if you
Speaker 1: wanted to like show off a little bit and show
Speaker 1: your status. But it went away after the Romans for
Speaker 1: a long time and then came back with the Europeans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting that like the Europeans had all this
Speaker 1: influence the Chinese had already in I ended this for
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand years, and it just kind of
Speaker 1: like evolved in isolation later on. So it really kind
Speaker 1: of does just go to go to show you like
Speaker 1: surnames are just once you reach a certain point of
Speaker 1: you know, a civilization or a population growth, it's just
Speaker 1: something that's just going to come up inevitably organically. It's
Speaker 1: pretty neat. It is pretty neat. Um and we I
Speaker 1: know we mentioned um. Some Asian names, I think Korean
Speaker 1: and Japanese and Chinese are traditionally written with the surname
Speaker 1: first and then you're given name. And then just a
Speaker 1: few years ago, Japan I think formally enshrined that and said,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not gonna western ize this anymore. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go with the surname first. Yeah, they're going back
Speaker 1: to their roots. I love it. A new kind of suit.
Speaker 1: That's right. You you got that one really? Yeah? Sure, man, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I'm impressed. Uh, she'll be. Well, since you're impressed, let's
Speaker 1: take a break, because I don't I want to. I
Speaker 1: want to just like bathe in that for minute. I
Speaker 1: think it's a wise move, or rather two minutes, and uh,
Speaker 1: we'll be back and talk about the different types of
Speaker 1: surnames and why they came about right after this defin
Speaker 1: sk Alright. So, um, what's interesting is that surnames, you know,
Speaker 1: take all sorts of different shapes and forms, and there's
Speaker 1: actually some cultures that just don't have them or don't
Speaker 1: use them. I believe, Um, the Philippines didn't use surnames
Speaker 1: until they were colonized by um Europeans. Um. So I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some some cultures that don't use surnames at all.
Speaker 1: But among the cultures that do use surnames in different
Speaker 1: way shape, way, shapes and forms, there's actually some commonalities
Speaker 1: almost universality amongst our names and where they came from
Speaker 1: and what they mean. Um. And there's at least four
Speaker 1: or five that you can kind of hack out that. Say,
Speaker 1: wherever you go in the world, if they're using surnames,
Speaker 1: they may have some sort of like version of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is the stuff that's really cool. I think. Um,
Speaker 1: and this found me saying, you know, because ed gives
Speaker 1: a bunch of great examples of a surname, and then
Speaker 1: when you find out how it evolved to be that,
Speaker 1: you just go, oh, well, that completely makes sense. Now.
Speaker 1: Uh well, I was about to say something about jobs,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to jobs a minute. Um. First though,
Speaker 1: is place names, specific place names. If you were and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people know this one, but
Speaker 1: if you were from a place, you might have been
Speaker 1: Chuck of Atlanta, or you know, if it was in Europe,
Speaker 1: it might you might have substituted d E for the Latin,
Speaker 1: like chuck d Atlanta, and then over time that d um.
Speaker 1: There's this this process that happens to words, where if
Speaker 1: you use a word for a thousand years, it gets
Speaker 1: kind of molded and shaped and um and cut down
Speaker 1: to a more manageable size. You're saying L and OMG
Speaker 1: right exactly or l m f A oh because party
Speaker 1: rock is in the house tonight. Um. But it's called truncation.
Speaker 1: And the same thing happens with names too, So instead
Speaker 1: of Chuck day Atlanta, it could just become chuckd Atlanta,
Speaker 1: d apostrophe Atlanta, which is very kind of nice, like
Speaker 1: I like the way that rings that Atlanta. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to say it like that, or you could
Speaker 1: just get rid of that apostrophe and make it one
Speaker 1: word chucked Atlanta, right, And that actually happened like that
Speaker 1: with the name Darcy. Um. It used to be um
Speaker 1: somebody a day r C r C is a village
Speaker 1: I believe in France, or Normandy maybe um, And then
Speaker 1: over time it became d apostrophe r C as in
Speaker 1: Jefferson Darcy from Married with Children, or just Darcy d
Speaker 1: A r c y as in Mr Darcy from Pride
Speaker 1: and Prejudice, who I presume Jefferson Darcy's character is based on.
Speaker 1: But if you have the name Darcy, um, you can
Speaker 1: almost I mean, there are other ways that you can
Speaker 1: acquire last surname, which will we'll see kind of along
Speaker 1: the way, but Um, chances are you can probably trace
Speaker 1: that back to the fact that someone in your lineage
Speaker 1: was from Arc. Yes. Um. And it also suggests that
Speaker 1: some somewhere back in your lineage, somebody was probably of
Speaker 1: uh noble lineage, because it was the nobles who would
Speaker 1: have taken the place that they were from as their surname,
Speaker 1: because number one, they would go off to court, so
Speaker 1: they would be I'm Jefferson Darcy, so you know, not
Speaker 1: Jefferson d Atlanta, Jefferson Darcy, I'm the one from Darcy
Speaker 1: or from Arcy. Right, Um, a commoner from r c
Speaker 1: would have no reason to to say that they're from
Speaker 1: Arcy because they don't ever leave Arci. They spent their
Speaker 1: entire life there exactly. And then also, um, it would
Speaker 1: let people know that you were, um you basically like
Speaker 1: ruled that land that you were from. That was that
Speaker 1: was that And it's called a toponymic name. Um, where
Speaker 1: you're it's a place name that you've taken as your
Speaker 1: last name. That's right. If you were a commoner, like
Speaker 1: you said, you would not be Chuck of Atlanta because
Speaker 1: I was I grew up a commoner because I could
Speaker 1: make no claim that I ruled Atlanta back in the
Speaker 1: medieval times or post medieval times. Um, and everyone else
Speaker 1: would have that name too. And in my little neighborhood
Speaker 1: that didn't have a lot of money, let's say, but
Speaker 1: you might have a really local name that is um
Speaker 1: more like topographic. Like if your last name is hill
Speaker 1: or under hill or green, then chances are you're you know,
Speaker 1: distant relatives lived on a hill or on a green
Speaker 1: or under a hill. I don't know if that there
Speaker 1: were cave dwellers, but those are literally named. There's a
Speaker 1: name by water. I've never really heard that, but you
Speaker 1: know it literally means you live by the water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some really nice names that have to do with water.
Speaker 1: Um as that served his last names like bay, shore, bay, meadow. Um.
Speaker 1: I think those are very pleasant, but that I never
Speaker 1: really realized that means that their family lived by a bay,
Speaker 1: by a meadow. I guess last names. Those are very
Speaker 1: nice last names. And then um, Chuck. I also realized
Speaker 1: just now when you were talking, that you could have
Speaker 1: rightly called yourself chuck unpaved road right, Sure that would
Speaker 1: have that would have definitely placed you there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I grew up on a chuck to gravel. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: via Graville another locator or I guess topographic. Um, it's
Speaker 1: sort of along those same lines. If you ever hear
Speaker 1: anyone with the last name of like Scott or Western.
Speaker 1: Western is a great example. It's a great last name
Speaker 1: or the last name Ireland that you know, those are
Speaker 1: just very quite literal last names taken because chances are
Speaker 1: they moved to a different place and maybe that was
Speaker 1: a different rentiator, like there, you know that maybe they
Speaker 1: even called the person from Ireland that moved to a
Speaker 1: place not in Ireland, Ireland, right exactly. They were probably emigrants,
Speaker 1: you know, they were the Scott who just showed up
Speaker 1: that everybody liked, you know, the Scott Okay, yeah, John Scott,
Speaker 1: the Scott school, right exactly. Um. It's also like in
Speaker 1: that movie Zombie Land, where everybody's called where they're from.
Speaker 1: I don't remember that, Yeah, I think, Um, what's his name,
Speaker 1: Jesse Eisenberg. Isn't that who's in it? Yeah? He he's
Speaker 1: like Columbus And I can't remember what Woody Harrelson where
Speaker 1: he's from? Text maybe or some something like that. I know, gotcha. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to give a Zombie Land shout out.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a good movie. It really was surprisingly so.
Speaker 1: Um or if you're just finished several you just have
Speaker 1: a last initial like Mark s Well, I just watched
Speaker 1: it twice because Emily didn't watch it the first go round,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I think you would like this actually,
Speaker 1: so um, I watched it all the way through again,
Speaker 1: so I obviously loved it. But that boy, that season
Speaker 1: Family was to st at minute panic attack. It really was,
Speaker 1: and one of the most unfair cliffhangers history of TV
Speaker 1: really was, but really really good stuff. Love it. So
Speaker 1: um moving on, Chuck Um. One of the other things
Speaker 1: we could have adopted as our surnames if that were
Speaker 1: a thing, like people were still taking new surnames, we
Speaker 1: could be Josh Podcaster and Chuck Podcaster. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: I love this one because this is uh, probably the
Speaker 1: most common way that someone would get a surname. I
Speaker 1: think more than ten of English surnames are because of
Speaker 1: an occupation in your lineage. So you know, Karen Carpenter,
Speaker 1: she had someone way back in her family that was
Speaker 1: a Carpenter probably, or Earl Weaver had a Weaver in
Speaker 1: his family, and uh any Smith. I mean, well that's
Speaker 1: not true because there is a thing too where a
Speaker 1: lot of time immigrants would adopt the name like one
Speaker 1: of the most common names when they would immigrate to
Speaker 1: a country to fit in, so there might be smith's
Speaker 1: acquired that way. But uh, if you were a smith,
Speaker 1: then you had the last name Smith, right, um. Or
Speaker 1: Clark is a derivative of clerk, which was yeah at
Speaker 1: the time, not just some some pencil pusher. It was
Speaker 1: a scholarly person who could read and write at a
Speaker 1: time when most people couldn't read it. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: my ancestors was real smart. Um. Thatcher is another example
Speaker 1: of an occupation le based or shepherd. Uh. These are
Speaker 1: all very obvious, but one kind of cool little oh
Speaker 1: moments is in medieval England they would use s t
Speaker 1: e r or x t e r as a suffix
Speaker 1: if it was a woman's occupation, So a baker would
Speaker 1: become Baxter or brewer would become Brewster. That's right, um,
Speaker 1: so uh, and that's that holds not just for England,
Speaker 1: but like if you went to Germany and your last
Speaker 1: name Schmidt, it's it's the same thing as if you
Speaker 1: were in England and your last name Smith, because there
Speaker 1: was somebody in your lineage that was a blacksmith, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. Um. And it was almost like like
Speaker 1: I was saying when that Doomsday book was was um
Speaker 1: when it came out. Sure, it was like a snapshot
Speaker 1: of professions at the time. UM. And apparently within about
Speaker 1: three d four hundred years the use of surnames had
Speaker 1: solidified enough that people became weird for the tradition of
Speaker 1: it being weird for us to say I'm changing my
Speaker 1: last name to podcaster because it's my job, that had
Speaker 1: really kind of solidified. People weren't taking on new surnames,
Speaker 1: they were getting them passed along, and so um. Professions
Speaker 1: that came after the fourteenth and fifteen centuries don't usually
Speaker 1: pop up very often as people's last name. No, but
Speaker 1: it's funny now that I'm thinking my Instagram handle is
Speaker 1: Chuck the Podcaster, I should podcast. I should change it
Speaker 1: to de ampost future. That'd be pretty fun. I think
Speaker 1: that's a great idea, Charles. Another fun thing that Ed
Speaker 1: found was sometimes actors back in the day would um,
Speaker 1: sort of with a nod and a wink, take a
Speaker 1: surname of a character that they played a lot. And
Speaker 1: anyone that knows the origins of the theater knows that
Speaker 1: actors were. You know, they're not like they are to day.
Speaker 1: They were generally sort of the lower class. And so
Speaker 1: if you that, that would like sort of explain away
Speaker 1: why you might find someone of the of a lower
Speaker 1: class maybe with the last name king or lord, because
Speaker 1: they might have been an actor who played a king
Speaker 1: or a lord a lot. Yes. Uh. And then nicknames
Speaker 1: play a really big role across cultures. Uh. And again
Speaker 1: this is kind of what they think the tradition of
Speaker 1: first names came out of. Like your your first name
Speaker 1: was not necessarily John or Jim or Josh or Chalk
Speaker 1: or anything like that way back in the day. It
Speaker 1: was probably just the initial differentiator for you, you you know,
Speaker 1: like instead of that guy, No, no, not that guy.
Speaker 1: That guy they would say, you know red or apparently
Speaker 1: sherlock means fair headed. Um. They would also they would
Speaker 1: apparently if you did things with say like your penis,
Speaker 1: you might end up with a nickname name like Shakespeare
Speaker 1: they think is actually that or Wagstaff they think are
Speaker 1: actually leap from from that kind of lewd uh toilet humor,
Speaker 1: lowbrow humor that people used to love in the medieval era.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean there was you know, I mean
Speaker 1: Shakespeare itself was sort of body. But I took an
Speaker 1: English class where we did. Uh. I took a couple
Speaker 1: of like, um, not play writing. Well, I did take
Speaker 1: play writing, but play reading classes. What would you call that? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: play reading had a better name than that. Uh. And
Speaker 1: a lot of the place that we read from the
Speaker 1: time period that weren't Shakespeare were just toilet humor, blue humor,
Speaker 1: dirty body humor. And it's not like that's just gone anywhere.
Speaker 1: I mean, I made a marry but children reference not
Speaker 1: twenty minutes ago, so it's still around, although married with
Speaker 1: children is not around anymore. But you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But I would pose it that, like sophisticated intelligent humor
Speaker 1: is a pretty recent invention, you know. I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are gets of it here there over time, Like Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin had a pretty sharp wit, and he was he
Speaker 1: was of an intelligent humor. No, you're right. I mean
Speaker 1: the first joke was pulled my finger, let's be honest, right,
Speaker 1: And that lasted a long time and people use that
Speaker 1: until that well went dry. But I think it's a
Speaker 1: fairly recent thing. And I think, um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that's kids introduction to humor is like lowbrow toilet humor.
Speaker 1: But I think it's a pretty big marker based on
Speaker 1: how fast you you evolve into intelligent humor. Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: for sure. Like my daughter's her the funniest words for
Speaker 1: her are or when she's trying to make a joke.
Speaker 1: Like kids don't make really good jokes. No, they don't. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're all because they're not sophisticated yet. But they sure
Speaker 1: do like to talk about your you know, having poop
Speaker 1: in your hair and stuff like that. You know, it
Speaker 1: is a pretty good one. And me laughing certainly doesn't help. No,
Speaker 1: definitely not. Does Emily get mad or does she laugh too, No,
Speaker 1: she just walks through the room and goes, she got
Speaker 1: that from you, so she is of your own making.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, I said, I actually do have
Speaker 1: poop in my hair. It's not a joke. And then say,
Speaker 1: pull my finger, Emily, I probably should take back like
Speaker 1: my little soapbox thing condemning toilet and low brow humor,
Speaker 1: because it is still kind of funny now that you
Speaker 1: mentioned it. Yeah, I love it. I mean I like both.
Speaker 1: I like a sharp wit and I like a fart joke,
Speaker 1: all all at the same time. That chuck makes you
Speaker 1: a renaissance man. Alright, good. Uh if you, Well, I
Speaker 1: was trying to tie that into what I was about
Speaker 1: to say next, but I really couldn't think of a
Speaker 1: good last name for that. But um, if you Another
Speaker 1: very common surname convention is if you were the son
Speaker 1: or daughter of somebody and if John was your dad,
Speaker 1: you would be Johnson or Smithson. Uh. Sometimes it was
Speaker 1: even more basic than that, like if your name was
Speaker 1: It gives the example of someone named Martin and then
Speaker 1: as some named George, they might just take the dad's
Speaker 1: name and be George Martin. Right. Uh. And that's typically
Speaker 1: especially in Western Europe in the UK. Um, that's it's
Speaker 1: it took the father's lineage. So it's patronymic. Is that
Speaker 1: kind of naming convention, And there is such a thing
Speaker 1: as matronymic naming conventions. It's just much rarer in h
Speaker 1: in our cultures. Um, but it does happen, Like Marriott
Speaker 1: means a child of Mary. Um. Yeah, so it happens
Speaker 1: from time to time. It's just much less common. Um.
Speaker 1: But that is a like you said, it's a very
Speaker 1: common thing to name to take a relative's name, and
Speaker 1: it happens in It's a bunch of different ways um
Speaker 1: and a good example of how how you know different
Speaker 1: it can be as in Icelandic culture to where um,
Speaker 1: if you're a son, say you're the son of Eric
Speaker 1: um you of course yeah, um, your your last name
Speaker 1: would be eric Son if you were a son, if
Speaker 1: you were a daughter, you would be Eric's daughter. So
Speaker 1: Eric has a son and a daughter, and they're both
Speaker 1: his son and daughter, but they have two different last names.
Speaker 1: And the reason why Iceland is not catching fire and
Speaker 1: people are running all over the place and confusion is
Speaker 1: because they don't really care as much about last names. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is kind of cool because Ed brought up b
Speaker 1: York and she doesn't just go by B York to
Speaker 1: be like Madonna. B York goes by BI York because
Speaker 1: in Icelandic culture, the surname just isn't that big of
Speaker 1: a deal. Uh. And so I looked up her surname
Speaker 1: and be York's surname is actually and I'm going to
Speaker 1: mispronounce this because I have no idea about Icelandic stuff,
Speaker 1: but is it's Guman's daughter, which is of course d
Speaker 1: O T T I R. Because her father was Gumander Goonerson.
Speaker 1: That's a great which means that his father was named Gooner, right,
Speaker 1: so it's sort of this weird flip as you go back.
Speaker 1: It's like almost like a little puzzle, a little Icelandic puzzle.
Speaker 1: It is. It's pretty cool. And then also in a
Speaker 1: stroke of awesomeness, um, Iceland has also come up with
Speaker 1: a third uh, a third name for non binary gendered people, Um,
Speaker 1: who don't go by son or daughter, they go by Burr.
Speaker 1: So it would be Eric Burr. That's right, and that
Speaker 1: you know, that's the thing now with especially with hyphen nations.
Speaker 1: We'll get to why you might change your name, but um,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the sort of I feel like
Speaker 1: it's kind of antiquated, but one of the things that
Speaker 1: we do here in the West sometimes is a woman
Speaker 1: that might take her husband's last name or they might
Speaker 1: hyphenate it. But with uh, you know, non binary parents
Speaker 1: or gay parents, sometimes they will hyphenate their last name,
Speaker 1: which you know, apparently can present a little bit of
Speaker 1: the conflict sometimes in that there uh struggle too, I
Speaker 1: guess have a non traditional family but also sort of
Speaker 1: try and fit in with a more traditional naming convention. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I had never considered, And that's sad. That that
Speaker 1: is even a question, but it makes sense in a
Speaker 1: sad kind of way. Go Iceland, now, huh yeah. And
Speaker 1: then also, um, we really shouldn't leave our Arab cultures
Speaker 1: who use Ibben first son of or if the name
Speaker 1: Ibben comes in the middle of the name, maybe been
Speaker 1: or Bent as daughter of, and it usually can go
Speaker 1: back a couple of generations, sometimes three, which explains why
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ebbins or bins um followed by
Speaker 1: other names in somebody's full name from Arab cultures. That's right.
Speaker 1: Or Ed gives a great example of Saddam Hussein was
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein abdal Magid al tecret and Saddam would be
Speaker 1: the given name there, Hussein would be the father's name.
Speaker 1: Abdol Mageed is grandfather's name. Then al Tecredi is where
Speaker 1: he grew up. So that's sort of a a mesh
Speaker 1: of topic or not topographic. I guess, uh what do
Speaker 1: we call the geographic? Yeah, toponymic and then the patriarchal
Speaker 1: and everything's just sort of matched together and with his grandfather.
Speaker 1: Will you want to take another break and then come
Speaker 1: back and talk more about I don't know surnames. Sure, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do that. Everybody sit tight, sk uh. So
Speaker 1: one thing we didn't cover with um the uk uh.
Speaker 1: We got to cover the max oh yeah, and the
Speaker 1: the A P S. So, if you were Irish or Scottish,
Speaker 1: the prefix mac would what would mean son of So
Speaker 1: if your name was Dougal and you had a son
Speaker 1: named John, you would be John MacDougal. Or in the
Speaker 1: case of being from Wales, they use a P to
Speaker 1: mean son of so. And this is kind of interesting
Speaker 1: because it gets truncated along the way. So ap Rice
Speaker 1: r h y s would be son of Rice, but
Speaker 1: then over time that gets truncated and the ap just
Speaker 1: becomes a P. So the name price originally can vary. Well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say like in all cases obviously, but
Speaker 1: I could have very well been like the son of Rice, yeah,
Speaker 1: or Reese. So it could also be the last name priest.
Speaker 1: That don't sound right right, We're going with Rice instead
Speaker 1: and then Chuck. So uh. We talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about changing names, and there's all sorts of reasons people
Speaker 1: change names. There's also a lot of reasons people take
Speaker 1: on names. Again, sometimes it's decreed by law. Apparently there
Speaker 1: was a law during the Austro Hungarian Empire that you
Speaker 1: needed a last name, and so there was a kind
Speaker 1: of a custom or a trend you could almost say,
Speaker 1: among Jewish people who lived in that area or under
Speaker 1: Austro Hungarian rule, UM to kind of take names from nature,
Speaker 1: like Tannenbaum or Rosen meaning fir tree or rose um.
Speaker 1: And that's where a lot of the more common Jewish
Speaker 1: names come from that have a kind of a Germanic
Speaker 1: tone to them. And then also there was a big UM,
Speaker 1: there's a big conundrum, ra I guess the decision that
Speaker 1: faced UM freed enslaved people after the Emancipatent Proclamation then
Speaker 1: later on juneteenth UM, because they didn't actually have surnames
Speaker 1: at the time, especially if they'd you know been you know, second, third, fourth,
Speaker 1: fifth generation American. Um, they might not have a surname
Speaker 1: at all, That's right. And so in many cases, uh,
Speaker 1: they were given or sometimes chosen uh, the name of
Speaker 1: the person who enslaved them, which obviously, as generations went on,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sit as well. Uh. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of times, if you're African American, you may change your
Speaker 1: name later on, UM, Like you know, many generations later
Speaker 1: to sort of shed yourself of that enslaved name. And
Speaker 1: then probably the most common reason, especially in the West,
Speaker 1: that people um changed their names is through marriage, which
Speaker 1: has evolved over time. You know. Traditionally it was the
Speaker 1: wife took the husband's last name, shed her own, you know,
Speaker 1: maiden name, maybe moved it to her middle name UH,
Speaker 1: and then that was it UM. And then over time
Speaker 1: there's there's been kind of like this uh um push
Speaker 1: against just being completely subsumed by their husband's identity UM.
Speaker 1: And that introduced the uh, the hyphenated last name into
Speaker 1: Western culture, which again it's like if you go to Spain,
Speaker 1: they've been doing that for a very long time, so
Speaker 1: much so that like um, you know, the children will
Speaker 1: actually have both of their parents last names, father's first
Speaker 1: hyphened mother's second. And that's that's been going on. It's
Speaker 1: called dosa politos um. But in here, in like the West,
Speaker 1: I should say in the United States, because I guess
Speaker 1: Spain would technically be the West. UM. That's becoming more
Speaker 1: and more common, but it's still fairly new if you
Speaker 1: think about it. I mean, I don't remember people hyphenating
Speaker 1: their names very commonly before, like the eighties or nineties,
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, I mean, I'm sure it happened,
Speaker 1: but it seems like it definitely caught on. Um. You
Speaker 1: know obviously was sort of in lockstep with the women's
Speaker 1: liberation movement. Yeah, they called it the flash dance effect. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's you know, there's there's no wrong way to do it.
Speaker 1: People should do what they want to do. I never
Speaker 1: wanted or expected Emily to change her name because she's
Speaker 1: just She's got a great last name and that's who
Speaker 1: she is. And I never I just thought, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it seemed outdated to me, but there there is no
Speaker 1: right or wrong way. And eventually years later, Um, I
Speaker 1: think it was probably lined up. When my daughter came along,
Speaker 1: she ended up going with a hyphen it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then you know our very good friend and friend of
Speaker 1: the show who played Jerry on the Stuff You Should
Speaker 1: Know TV show, Uh, Lucy waynewright Roach, that is a
Speaker 1: hyphen it because her father is Loud and Wayne Wright
Speaker 1: and her mother is says he Roach, and so she
Speaker 1: went with a hyphen it. Yeah. Apparently there's a famous
Speaker 1: um bass player for Jethro toll Um. I had not
Speaker 1: heard of this. Dude had you did you know had
Speaker 1: had not? So his first name is Jeffrey. Will call
Speaker 1: him that for the moment. But both of his parents
Speaker 1: UM had the last name of Hammond. Yeah, they weren't related.
Speaker 1: UM just by him playing bass for Jethro Toll and Um.
Speaker 1: He wanted to honor both of them, so he took
Speaker 1: the last name Jeffrey Hammond Hammond with the hyphen in
Speaker 1: between him. Yeah, it's pretty funny. Yep, good job, Jeffrey.
Speaker 1: I know that's pretty great. He got a great story.
Speaker 1: Everywhere he goes. Intelligent humor, that's right. Yeah, you think, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody who went to a Shakespeare play would get that
Speaker 1: now be totally lost on him. One of the myths
Speaker 1: we can kind of bust, although I'm sure it happens
Speaker 1: some was this notion that if you came through Ellis
Speaker 1: Island you were just given whatever name the person at
Speaker 1: immigration on Ellis Island felt like filling out, or if
Speaker 1: they wanted to shorten it, they shortened it, or if
Speaker 1: they want to get rid of some of the hyphens,
Speaker 1: they get rid of the hyphens. Apparently, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: did happen some, but ung angle man, I could never
Speaker 1: say say this Anglish sizing. He nailed it. Yeah, Anglicized
Speaker 1: did not happen to the extent that people think it
Speaker 1: did on Ellis Island. And many times it was the
Speaker 1: people themselves that new country, new start wanted to fit
Speaker 1: in that would um drop the apostrophe from Darcy and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah, and I saw that, if anything,
Speaker 1: um Ellis Island Uh immigration officers were more prone to
Speaker 1: actually correct mistakes and spelling errors that some shipping clerk
Speaker 1: over in Europe had made on the ship's manifest Um.
Speaker 1: Most of them spoke multiple languages, and we're you know,
Speaker 1: pretty familiar with what you know. There's a finite number
Speaker 1: of last names, and so if you see one with
Speaker 1: the you know, the the name misspelled, they probably corrected it.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of yeah, it's like the opposite of
Speaker 1: the myth that you have. Yeah. Another thing that people
Speaker 1: have done to make it maybe just a little bit
Speaker 1: easier on everybody else in themselves is to, uh, if
Speaker 1: they have a name that's um kind of a lot
Speaker 1: of consonants in it, let's say, yeah, we're looking at
Speaker 1: you Slavic countries, is to phonetically spell it out uh
Speaker 1: and eds like a tease. At the beginning, Ed's last
Speaker 1: name is we always calling the Grabsters Grabnowski, and he
Speaker 1: lives in the region where there are a lot of
Speaker 1: Polish people still living there. And he says that he
Speaker 1: has never seen another Grabowski, but he does see Grabowski's
Speaker 1: or Grabski's. Yep, no Grabsters. No, we're trying to make
Speaker 1: it happen though, aren't we. Yeah, my friend Paul's last
Speaker 1: name is Waslow, but it is not spelled w A
Speaker 1: z l o W. I can't even remember how how
Speaker 1: it's spelled. But it's not intuitive. But he held onto
Speaker 1: it and he didn't he didn't change it phonetically for Paul,
Speaker 1: sticking into the man Paul's family. Yes, that's right. Have
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I am looking here? Do we
Speaker 1: have anything else? Not? Really, nothing of any great interest
Speaker 1: if you ask me. Now, I think this is good stuff.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's cool. People should check it like.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear some stories from listeners, or maybe
Speaker 1: do a little research into your own name and where
Speaker 1: it might have come from, because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting stories out there. I'd love to hear more. Yeah. Also, Chuck,
Speaker 1: by the way, your last name denotes somebody who used
Speaker 1: to live by a hill in the Celtic era. Oh really, Bryant, Yes,
Speaker 1: derived from Brionne Hill. People pronounced Briony in northern France,
Speaker 1: so you're a Frenchy Chuck. Interesting, Yeah, pretty cool? Yeah
Speaker 1: dat Atlanta. Well, since Chuck said ha ha, of course,
Speaker 1: that means it's time for a listener mail. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh choir math and I should
Speaker 1: say that uh Lyle here had a lot of consternation
Speaker 1: after Lyle sent this email about because Lyle is a
Speaker 1: math person and I think a math teacher about how
Speaker 1: Lyle chose to express this so much so that almost
Speaker 1: didn't read ex didn't want to call his Lyle any stress.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna read it anyway. And this is about
Speaker 1: the church choir coincidence. Uh. When we said one in
Speaker 1: a million, he said, did you guys calculate that yourself?
Speaker 1: Guessing you repeated it from something else? Because unless I'm
Speaker 1: missing something, one out of one million is crazy wrong.
Speaker 1: Using the assumptions you stated for two reasons, here we go.
Speaker 1: If there are fifteen members and each had a one
Speaker 1: quarter chance of being late, the probabilities were equal and independent,
Speaker 1: so it was like rolling fifteen four sided dice. Uh,
Speaker 1: that would be roughly a one in a billion chance
Speaker 1: and number two point two. Even the calculation in one
Speaker 1: completely fails to capture what you seem to want to
Speaker 1: express the chance of something like this happening, i e.
Speaker 1: The simultaneous choire lateness coinciding with the explosion. That would
Speaker 1: be trickier to work out. The simplest way to calculate
Speaker 1: it would be to decide on the chance of a
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty Nebraska church blowing up on a given night
Speaker 1: and multiply that by the one in a billion chance above.
Speaker 1: So basically it sounds like we did half of the
Speaker 1: equation and didn't even do that half. Right, No, that
Speaker 1: sounds like us. So he says, you know, did churches
Speaker 1: blow off and blow up off in nineteen fifty Nebraska.
Speaker 1: But see, you could also say a building blowing up
Speaker 1: or a building killing somebody. Like, I don't know where
Speaker 1: you draw the line because I'm not a math person
Speaker 1: or how you would quantify that. I would think you'd
Speaker 1: need to go with churches just to compare apple to apples.
Speaker 1: And then also, you know, not every building is going
Speaker 1: to invite people into it at seven pm on a
Speaker 1: night or something so good point and then actually goes
Speaker 1: on to to say it's easy to get overly dazzled
Speaker 1: doing calculations like these, And I think that's what we
Speaker 1: are now, is overly dazzled dazzled. The more specifically described
Speaker 1: have any event or collection of events, the more astronomically
Speaker 1: unlikely it becomes. Uh, I e. The chance of my
Speaker 1: spaghetti being in this exact configuration or mind bogglingly low. Uh,
Speaker 1: pretty amazing story still, and that is from Lyle. That
Speaker 1: is classic Lyle, always slipping a spaghetti reference into his emails.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, that is interesting to think about though, Like,
Speaker 1: depending on how far you want to drill down you
Speaker 1: can you know, it gets a little nutty totally. But
Speaker 1: I like his calculations even better than ours. One in
Speaker 1: a million chance kind of dazzling one in a billion chance.
Speaker 1: And that's just step one. That's I got stars in
Speaker 1: my eyes basically. Wow. Well thanks a lot, Lyle. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry for driving you a little bit crazy. Uh. We
Speaker 1: are glad that you could take the time to explain
Speaker 1: to us, um what we got wrong and not call
Speaker 1: us stupid in the in the bargain. Thank you. If
Speaker 1: you want to be like Lyle and get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, you can send us an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H