Series Jens presents: Player names' Etymology

[Jens]

Greetings y'all,

 

It's been a long time since I've been a decent and active member, and it's been even longer since I last posted a topic (especially when you don't count my fantastic, ground-breaking career with Gravy). But I have returned to give you all the thrill of this years' FMH!

 

I bet you once wonderd: "hmm, well that's a strange name, I wonder where it comes from." This is the research domain of the wonderful science of etymology! In a series of articles, I will take you all by the hand and guide you through this amazing world of goofy, weird and funny - as well as cool and interesting! - names. We will be researching players such as Rooney, Messi, Praet, Bruno, Hazard, Kompany, Ferdinand, Terry,... And many others!

 

Today, we will start off with one of the most wonderful names in Dutch:

 

 

Yes! We will be research the great ancestry of the 'De Wit' family name. Great, isn't it? I can feel you all being excited.

 

Where to begin? First of all, it's worthwhile to note that the definite article 'De' is written with a capital. While in the Netherlands, all those 'infixes' (stuff you put between other stuff; usually the term infix is only used when you put an extra morfeme [the smallest part of a word bearing any meaning: eg in 'being', 'be' is a morfeme] between other morfemes, like in certain Native American languages, but I digress) so I was saying: these infixes, like 'De' are almost exclusively written with small letters in Dutch; de Jong, de Guzman,...

 

In Belgium however, having your 'De' written with a small letter ('de') means you have an ancestry of a certain nobility. Which almost no one in Belgium is. This is an important difference between Belgian and Dutch names! (Don't you forget it!) For my precious Marc, who is my in game son, for those who haven't noticed, this means he does not have a noble background (well, he has noble ancestry in a different way of course, by which I mean that I, sir Jens, am the greatest).

 

So, you may wonder, if our name isn't related to any nobility, than what is the point of even mentionning the name? Ah,... My dear boy, before Napoleon (the emperor of France from around 1785 to 1815) made the use of surnames obligatory for everyone, even commoners, surnames were based on nicknames. Many of those nicknames came from their profession: De Graeve would probably have been a gravedigger, D(d)e Boer would have been a peasant and so on. The fact that our last name is De Wit (literally translated as The White), therefore gives a clear image of my ancestry:

 

 

Yes! There is no doubt about it! I ( and my son Marc) are descendants of precious old Gandalf. Which immediately clears the questions of Marc's attributes: he knows when to be aggressive, is technically gifted and, my, is he quick for such a dear old chap.

 

This concludes the pilot episode of Pleayer names' etymology. I hope you all liked it and share your thoughts with me. If you have any requests on who to do next or anyone you want to be done, let me know!

 

Cheers,

Jens

 

 

This has been a True Story, brought to you by Jens The White.

[Lee-Roy]

Not usually my cup of tea but a very interesting read. I'm looking forward to finding out what the Banana family used to do for an occupation :lol:

[Peely]

Interesting subject

 

 

Not usually my cup of team but a very interesting read. I'm looking forward to finding out what the Banana family used to do for an occupation :lol:

 

I seem to recall that if you look at Yaya Banana's details it lists his real name as Banana Yaya. At least it did on FMH 2012. Curiouser and curiouser.

[Ashez]

An enjoyable read

[Jens]

Welcome (back) everyone, for a new and exciting episode in Player Names’ Etymology! After briefly introducing the concept and giving an (excellent!) example of what this subject entails in the first episode, we will look at a more well-known example today. An example, which I am sure, you will know everything about yourselves. Yet for those who don’t (or those who want to know even more): have a seat and enjoy the etymology of Wayne ROONEY’s last name.

The origin of this name is complex in its simplicity. Or was it simple in its complexity…? Anyway, it means it’s simple and yet it isn’t (I love this sort of confusing sentences, yet I hate them). Hehe (<-meant as an ‘evil’ laugh). The name ROONEY comes originally from the English ‘looney’. But then, you may ask, how come it says Rrrrrrrooney, instead of Looney with an L? There is a simple explanation for this, and you will read all about it in………. ‘The Next Paragraph’. (*Tumtumtuuuuuuuuuum*)

The Next Paragraph

To understand the change from ‘L’ to ‘R’, we have to dig into linguistics again. It is important to know that in every language you have some sort of ‘switches’. The short explanation (of Chomsky’s universal grammar, combined with pragmatic linguistics) is that every language makes a choice between every switch and chooses which ones will be incorporated in said language. This means that there might be some peculiarities in a language that are not present at all in another. One example of this is that English (but also Dutch, French, German,…) makes the distinction between an ‘R’ sound and an ‘L’ sound. In English, there is a difference between ‘R’ough and ‘L’augh (don’t mind spelling, we’re talking about sounds here). But in Chinese, this difference between ‘R’ and ‘L’ does simply not exist! (Yes, that is indeed why we mock the Chinese pronunciation of every word with an ‘R’.) To make this difference even clearer: we don’t distinguish the difference of a ‘K’ sound pronounced at the back or at the front of the mouth. But in Russian, this has an important semantic difference! (There is a difference in what words mean).

Tl; dr: we can only ‘pronounce’ words correctly and grasp their meaning if our language permits it.

Following this logic, Looney became Rooney, but that still raises the question: how did Loony change to what we know as the balding, whining ManU goat? As we saw last week, last names were given as nicknames in earlier times. Wayne Rooney’s greatgreatgreatgreat grandfather, Fitzwilliam Looney (yes, he was part Irish!), was an adventurer in service of Queen Victoria. (As their balding complexion shows, they don’t live very long lives, the Looneys.) Fitzwilliam travelled long and far and eventually ended up in Antwerp’s Chinatown. There he lived as a Buddhist monk and he dedicated his life to the study of the 107 different uses of rat’s stomach in various fields such as food, science and football. Fitzwilliam left England as a 20-something, looking very young and alive. He returned 3 years later, looking like a wrung-out mob, bald, grey and everything. Luckily for him, he had some leftover sperm, which he used to get some offspring. On the birth certificate he wrote, influenced by his Chinese experience (see above), the name of Wayne’s greatgreatgreat grandfather: Waynewilliam Rooney.

Thank you for your attention and please leave a comment.

P.s.: suggestions are always welcome!

(And apologies for the simplistic lay-out, but Vibe is acting up on my tablet.)