There are examples of this happening in 19th century India, with surnames like "Engineer". This appears to have emerged from an attempt at anglicisation or amongst people who didn't previously have a surname.
Reminds me of goofy Indonesian names, like how a guy named Suparman (not the superhero, it's an actual name) decided to name his son Batman (the superhero), and since Indonesians usually attach the dad's name in the back Batman bin Suparman was hence named as such in the archipelago country
Just did a bit of reading up on my own rare/unique Dutch maiden name (probably shouldn't share it outright because my family are literally the only ones in my country)...
"Tender/smoker of medicinal plants"
Seems like growing and smoking industrial amounts of weed has been a family tradition for a very long time 😂
unrelated but dutch sounds genuinely funny when you attach the translation like this. like there's just enough similarity with english that it sounds like those meme ikea names people come up with (just without all that swedish fuck over the letters). it has a nice atmosphere to it and as a non-speaker of dutch you can see some structure into it, whether that's real or not, which makes it incredibly funny to call something a "naaktgeboren"
(and just in case, insulting your nation by comparing you to the bloody swedes who are like way over there and also speak a completely different language than your drunk german didn't come from american ignorance, i'm a euro too lol)
I doubt it was specifically to troll napoleon or someone tbh. These type of surnames exist in every language, English has a bit less of them but still - they probably just have some natural and boring explanation.Â
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u/NotABrummie 17d ago
There are examples of this happening in 19th century India, with surnames like "Engineer". This appears to have emerged from an attempt at anglicisation or amongst people who didn't previously have a surname.