What are some archaic features of your language that can still be found in names?

21 comments

1. mayby surname -ówna ending for unmarried women example:

   family: Tyszkiewiczowie

   man – Tyszkiewicz

   women married – Tyszkiewiczowa (when i think about it this form is also not used that often any more)

   woman unmarried – Tyszkiewiczówna

   I don’t think i have seen it being used in written form nowdays, but you may sometimes encounter it in school

   It works only for some surnames

   /edit: for older (like XIX-early XX at most) stuff that you won’t see nowdays i can also mention use of X instead of “ks” in names/professions eg. Xawery, xiąże (=prince). X used to be a legit letter in polish alphabet, today it’s used only for foreign words

2. Some people use old spelling of their name if it starts with letter ‘v’. For example *Wirta* instead of *Virta*.

3. Maybe the suffix -kins as in Watkins, Hawkins, Jenkins etc? It’s a diminutive related to German -chen but it’s not one you’d use much in everyday life except if you’re trying to be affectionate or patronising.

   The suffix -win as well (eg. Irwin) is from an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘companion’ and is related to *vänn* in Swedish

4. Let’s take two fairly average surnames: Van Der Heyde and Van Den Broecke.

   Der and Den are fairly archaic articles that now almost solely remain in use in official titles, expressions and idioms: _Koning der Belgen_ (King of the Belgians), _scheiding der machten_ (separation of powers), …

   Heyde is an archaic spelling of heide (heathland).

   Broecke is an archaic spelling of broek, which meant swamp. This meaning of the word was lost entirely and the word broek now only means pants.

5. We have semivowels[ə], which can be found next to every “r” that doesn’t stand next to a vowel. For example trg [tərg] (square) or grm [gərm] (bush). A few hundred years ago, these words all had e’s in the place of a semivowel but they disappeared over time. Some words that don’t have r’s kept the “e” and we ended up with words like “pes”(dog) which is (supposed to be) pronounced [pəs]

   Another example of an ə might be Trst [Tərst] (Trieste) which was once called Terst. We can even see that on a higher resolution map of United Slovenia and I’m pretty sure it’s still called “Terst” in Czech

6. Surnames ending in -ch (Bosch, Antich, Blanch, Llach…). A final [k] sound used to be written like that. The modern spelling of those words only has the C: bosc, antic, blanc, llac…

7. The last name Lefebvre. The *b* is silent. It comes from the Middle Ages because of a confusion between the letters *u* and *v*. The diagram *bv* was used to indicate it was supposed to be pronounced as v and not u

   There’s also a more modern version of the surname now, Lefèvre, but Lefebvre is still among the top 15 of the most common last names.

8. Same with “kv” being spelled “qu” or “qv” (as in the surname ending with -quist/-qvist) and “v” being spelled “w” in Swedish (Wallin, Wikström).

9. Some Southern surnames are still spelled with the semi-consonant J. For example Iuliano and Juliano are two spelling variants of the same root surname. This usage of the J, which was common even in normal words a century ago, has completely disappeared from standard Italian.

   Dictionary-wise, many Italian last names have meanings, but some of them are very old, obsolete words. For example Ferrari = Smith (literally “blacksmiths”) but the modern word for blacksmith is “fabbro”

10. The entire Swiss language is basically an archaic version of modern-day German. A few examples:

    – Swiss German never went through the monophthongization that German experienced in early modern times (ca. 16th-17th centuries). In that regard, Swiss is very similar to Middle High German, as it was spoken in the 12th or 13th centuries. A few examples: German “Haus” (house) is Swiss “Huus” –> MHG: *hûs* (pronounced with a long “u”). German “weit” (far) is Swiss “wiit”; MHG: *wît*. German “Zeug” (thing, stuff) is Swiss “Züüg”; MHG: *ziuc*, pronounced *züük* and so forth.

    – At the same time, MHG had various diphthongs that turned into monophthongs in modern-day German but have remained diphthongs in Swiss. For example German “Liebe” is pronounced with a long ‘i’, in Swiss, however, it pronounced as a diphthong: /:liəbi/. Likewise, German “grüssen” (to greet) is still Swiss “grü-esse”, hence why it is German “Ich grüsse Sie” but Swiss “Grüetzi”. Porridge or musli is called “Müsli” in Germany but in Switzerland it’s “Müesli”. This creates a funny confusion because what Germans eat for breakfast (Müsli) is the Swiss plural diminutive of Muus (mouse), German “Maus”. So when Germans say they eat porridge for breakfast, it sounds to us as though they eat little mice.

    – German /k/ has remained /x/ in most Swiss dialects, so it’s “Chind” instead of “Kind” (child), “Chuchi” instead of “Küche” (kitchen”, “chlopfe” instead of “klopfen” (to knock) and so on. This is also a feature that’s leftover from middle high German. Also, Swiss only has the velar or uvular “ch”, the soft “ch” that is produced in the front of the mouth such as in German “Nacht” does not exist in Swiss.

    – Swiss is completely unaspirated. That’s why words such as “Pilot”, “Tiger” or “Kino” (movie theater) can sometimes sound a bit like “Bilot”, “Diger” and “Gino”. Swiss people can usually keep their p’s and b’s, t’s and d’s and k’s and g’s apart but there are some words where even a Swiss person has to ask one more time because the lack of aspiration can make the two consonants sound very similar.

    – Similar to MHG, some Swiss dialects still use different words for counting, depending on gender the noun has. There are three different words for “two”; German: “Zwei Männer (m.), zwei Frauen (f.), zwei Kinder (n.)” turns into Swiss: “Zwei Manne, zwee Froue, zwöi Chind.”

    – Similar to MHG, Swiss only has one single relative pronoun, the universally useful “wo”. German relative pronouns such as *der, die, das, als, welche* etc. do not exist in SWiss.

    – There are also a bunch of names that are influenced by these archaic rules. For example the short-form of Rudolph is “Rudi” in German but in Swiss it’s “Ruedi”. Likewise, Ulrich is “Uli” or “Ulli” in Germany but “Ueli” in Switzerland. In my city we once had a city council president (mayor) whose surname was “Haas”. In Germany it would be “Hase” (rabbit).

11. It’s very common to see surnames derived from old Danish spelling. Such as Waage would be written as “Våge” today,

12. The letter yogh (Ȝ) was used in old Scots to represent certain g and j sounds ( I think ). As the printing press became more widespread, this was incorrectly interpreted as a lower case z by printers who did not have a yogh available. Many Scottish place names, such as Cadzow and Culzean, now include a z as a result of this.

13. Not strictly speaking a French feature but some names here in (Eastern) Wallonia have kept the digraph “xh” . Xh was used in Walloon to denote an aspirated h (or ich-Laut in some areas). For example, Xhonneux is pronounced “Honneux” and not “Onneux” (or Ksonneux for French people).

14. Many names (people and places) have X pronounced as J or G before e,i. Say Ximénez, México, Texas, Mexía.

15. Something that I find interesting is the way we say the letter ß out loud. We pronounce it sz and in the past it was also spelled like that. So even though the letter doesn’t look like sz anymore, we still call it that.

16. I suppose the name David. It’s odd in that in modern day Portuguese you cannot end a word or name on a “D” and have no vowel following it (the exception being foreign words/names). The name David seems to be exempt from that rule, and going by how it’s pronounced it would make more sense for it to be spelt “Davide”.

17. In names? Some old noble families still living today take pride in spelling that pre-dates the current (~1400s) orthography and uses digraphs (and w). Czernin, Lobkowicz come to mind.

    Also an interesting note that the surname Czernin is written with the short i, while in all other applications it has long í: https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%8Cern%C3%ADn in early medieval digraph spelling, however, long í was written with the letter j (its sound was written with the letter g, if you’re curious). So proper application of that spelling to the name Černín should result in Czernjn, but they got stuck somewhere in between.

18. The language is pretty archaic, no need for names

    Though in names, you can find **y** and **w**, while in other places they are very rare (not counting gy, ly, ny, ty, those are separate letters).

19. Almost everything that isn’t international, slavism, anglicism or related to mathematics, linguistics. My rough guess is about 80% of the words.

    Interestingly enough Latvian language has a lot of words that make sense in Lithuanian and could be used, but are considered very archaic solely because the words we use today mean the same but are more specific. Thats just my opinion.

20. At some point in French, a lot of « os », « es », « is » syllables were replaced by « ô », « ê » and « î » respectively, as the « s » sound in those wasn’t pronounced anymore. For instance « hospital » became « hôpital », «forest » « forêt » and « isle », « île ». Proper names will often have kept the archaic spelling and also the equivalent English words will also have kept this archaic spellings as they were taken from French before the change in ortograph.

21. Yeah, a name like “Olof Lööf” is pronounced as if spelled /olåv löv/. It’s the pre 1906-1926 spelling reform that’s still around.