I\u2019m thinking of changing my last name (aka surname). <\/p>\n
How do \u201cKelvin Humorist\u201d, \u201cKelvin Bigrock\u201d, \u201cKelvin Bignose\u201d or \u201cKelvin Barking\u201d sound?<\/p>\n
Many surnames in many countries originate from a person\u2019s occupation (Cooper, Fletcher, Potter) or some land feature or building near where they lived (Brooks, Church, Green), some aspect of their physical appearance (Short, Brown), or where they were originally from. So all the names on my shortlist are in keeping with surname tradition, even if \u201cHumorist\u201d doesn\u2019t sound like a real surname\u2014but no doubt \u201cFuller\u201d, \u201cArcher\u201d and \u201cClark\u201d (Clerk) sounded odd when they were first used.<\/p>\n
Today, people might have names such as Rudi Programmer, David Recyclingdepot, Emily Facelift, or George Moosejaw. <\/p>\n
Naming people after something they live near might be problematic these days though, given population densities\u2014many people would share the same surname and therefore be mistakenly identified as related to each other. In Hollywood, the same difficulty might occur for \u201cFacelift\u201d.<\/p>\n
I wonder how Flashman\u2019s family (from Tom Brown\u2019s Schooldays<\/em>) acquired its name.<\/p>\n And I used to wonder about the Star Wars character, Chewbacca. I\u2019d grown up believing that his name was \u201cWookie Chewbacca\u201d and that \u201cChewbacca\u201d was his last name. It followed therefore that his name referred to his ancestors\u2019 (nasty) habit of chewing tobacco. Turns out that he is a member of the Wookiee species and that \u201cChewbacca\u201d is his only name. According to Wikipedia, the name is a corruption of the Russian word \u0441\u043e\u0431\u0430\u043a\u0430 (sobaka), meaning \u201cdog\u201d.<\/p>\n You live and learn. <\/p>\n But let\u2019s now throw another thought into the mix. Pretentious names for mundane jobs\u2014a phenomenon that presumably grew out of the need to make the holders of such jobs feel more valued.<\/p>\n Clerks are now Office Administrators. School dinner ladies (aka cooks\u2014or at least they were in my time) are now \u201cEducation Centre Nourishment Consultants\u201d. And bartenders are now mixologists or \u201cBeverage Dissemination Officers\u201d. (I\u2019m not making these up\u2014my sources might be, but I\u2019m not!)<\/p>\n Picture a latter-day Captain Cook sailing his ship around the world. When asked his name, he replies, \u201cCaptain James Educationcentrenourishmentconsultant at your service.\u201d <\/p>\n Or imagine former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark with a name like \u201cJoseph Officeadministrator\u201d.<\/p>\n Could you order a beer with a straight face knowing what the bartender\u2019s last name is?<\/p>\n Finally, let\u2019s throw another name trend into the soup. <\/p>\n For a while now, the tendency to select obscure or made-up first names or use alternative spellings for \u201cnormal\u201d names has been blowing the minds of registrars, teachers and others whose job entails the writing down of people\u2019s names. If you combine this phenomenon with a desire (or government mandate) to re-align last names with occupations or physical characteristics or whatever, we could end up with people named \u201cPhantasia Colourdistributiontechnician\u201d (Painter) or \u201cCosette Retailjedi\u201d (Shop assistant).<\/p>\n What would your last name become if for some reason, governments mandated that we change our names to reflect our occupation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m thinking of changing my last name (aka surname). How do \u201cKelvin Humorist\u201d, \u201cKelvin Bigrock\u201d, \u201cKelvin Bignose\u201d or \u201cKelvin Barking\u201d sound? Many surnames in many countries originate from a person\u2019s occupation (Cooper, Fletcher, Potter) or some land feature or building near where they lived (Brooks, Church, Green), some aspect of their physical appearance (Short, Brown), or where they were originally… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,490],"tags":[664,564,563,667],"class_list":["post-1180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake","category-the-commentaries","tag-500words","tag-chewie","tag-surname","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}