Interesting name for a deserter

[Trooper "D"]

Couldn't resist looking this up-

21 English Words That Sound Dirty In Other Languages (But Aren’t)

There are a lot of English words that are offensive in other languages, or at least sound dirty. Tread carefully with these.

www.babbel.com

Cookie is itself the bastardization of the Dutch Kookja (kook ya) which means little cake. Kook obviously means cake but can be eaten by a kook.

 

[gary]

I knew a pharmacist here named Fuchs. He called himself Fox. You can almost bet old Henry ****s did not pronounce his last name like it was spelled.

Definitely Fuchs (meaning fox) and Ellis Island (if that's his port of entry) was notorious for phonetic spelling of foreign names. Rommel had a liaison officer named Fuchs but Rommel always messed up and called him something like Wolf.

 

[Pollaco]

Definitely Fuchs (meaning fox) and Ellis Island (if that's his port of entry) was notorious for phonetic spelling of foreign names. Rommel had a liaison officer named Fuchs but Rommel always messed up and called him something like Wolf.

I often wondered about that "Ellis Island" thing. Many of us are stuck with an odd spelling of our name because some officer was having a bad day and wrote "grandpa's" name down the way he heard it or thought it ought to be spelled.

 

[Reconstructed Rebel]

Consider the spelling of Union General Orlando Poe's last name.

Per Wikipedia, Poe's great-great-grandparents were Catherine and George Jacob Pfau. They were of Palatine German descent, and their sons were the first to Anglicize their surname to Poe following the American Revolutionary War.

Pfau is a German name meaning peacock, and is pronounced with a silent P as Fow (rhymes with cow). So they likely changed the spelling of the name so that English speakers would not confuse their last name as being fowl or foul. No one wants to be Mr. Chicken or Mr. Nasty.

 

[Peace Society]

My grandfather's ancestor came from Germany through Ellis Island. They gifted him with the name Ramoly - and no one has any idea what it might have been before.

 

[rebelatsea]

My grandfather's ancestor came from Germany through Ellis Island. They gifted him with the name Ramoly - and no one has any idea what it might have been before.

I'm going to make a guess here but "Ramellen" is a village in the Netherlands, could your ancestor have been a Nederlanden rather than German? The origin of the name means to rap or knock.

 

[Peace Society]

I'm going to make a guess here but "Ramellen" is a village in the Netherlands, could your ancestor have been a Nederlanden rather than German? The origin of the name means to rap or knock.

Like I say - no one has any idea. It was his great or great-great grandfather, so maybe no one was interested in their own background for two or three generations - and it got lost.

 

[Trooper "D"]

Like I say - no one has any idea. It was his great or great-great grandfather, so maybe no one was interested in their own background for two or three generations - and it got lost.

I don't think borders were solidified necessarily so what might be German was once Dutch and vice versa. I know my relatives in the Netherlands are right over the border from Hesse and relate to that Eastern German place. They also were once part of Friesland and so relate with those pirates as well. So many name possibilities throughout that mess. Then the Americans confused Deutchland with Dutch. Lucky anyone can find their roots.
Chavoux De Fries is French for Friesland Horse. Friesland was not a breed way back when that name was given to the wooden defenses. It must be an insult but I don't know for sure.
Cheers!

 

[WestCoastSB]

I have never heard that last name before. I certainly would not want it, and would not want to have to do genealogy research for it!

Easier than Smith or Williams though.

 

[Scott1967]

I suppose it's better than being an international football commentator and everytime the German International player called Stefan Kuntz gets the ball the commentator would just call him the number 10 .

 

[Story]

Privates...

 

[SJU]

Turns out the old stories of names being changed at Ellis Island aren't true. The names were recorded on a manifest at the port of origin. The immigration inspectors followed the manifests.
This is a good book on Ellis Island if anyone is interested.

The author wrote a great book on NYC municipal politics in the late 1960's - early 70's. A little off topic though!