During the chat today I asked how my name ended up being "Galfridus" in Geoffrey of Monmouth's writings. Arnie mentioned that it was typical of writers of the time to Latinize their names. We still have vestiges of that in such names as "Columbus," whose actual family name was Columbo.
Zmježd mentioned my name's German origins. Since English was originally a Germanic language, how did it, and so many other names, get altered into their present English forms, and why are some still Latinized?

Could you give some more details? What names are you thinking about?

However

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Originally posted by Geoff:
Since English was originally a Germanic language

English is still a Germanic language.

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Originally posted by goofy:
Could you give some more details? What names are you thinking about?

My own for one.

How about Michael Servetus? Wasn't that Latinized? How about Celsius and Linnaeus?

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Originally posted by Geoff:
How about ... Linnaeus?

Linnaeus was his Swedish name, according to Wikipedia, but his first name, Carl, was often Latinized to Carolus.

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Carl Linnaeus (Swedish original name Carl Nilsson Linnæus, 23 May[note 1] 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné,[1] was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus (after 1761 Carolus a Linné).

If you'd like to hear the pronunciation of Carl von Linné, click on the speaker symbol by the name and on the ▶ in the next page. It's not pronounced like I thought it was.

That symbol ▶ is used so often to indicate "start." I found it as "black right-pointing triangle" on this site. Is there another name for it? Do you just call it a start triangle? It seems there ought to be a single word for it.

There are several pages of symbols on that site.

A start prompt?

I asked how my name ended up being "Galfridus" in Geoffrey of Monmouth's writings.

Well, Geoffrey of Monmouth was known in Latin as Galfridus Monemutensis and in Welsh as Gruffudd ap Arthur (Geoffrey son of Arthur). The etymology of Geoffrey is a bit uncertain. Some think it might be from Germanic name Gottfried. The -fried part is easy enough, meaning 'peace' and occurs in many Germanic names, e.g., my middle name Frederic. If you look at all the different forms of Geoffrey, even just in English, there is a lot of variety.

As I was trying to explain on the chat, names are a kind of special area of linguistics. There is great variety in forms and pronunciation. And there were probably a lot of different forms between Galfridus and Geoffrey, as well as between the name's original Germanic form and Latinized Galfridus.

As to why some names are still Latinized and others not, there's probably little reason for it. I knew a girl in high school whose had a Latinized surname. Her family was German on her dad's side, and it was obvious to me that her name Heineccius was Latinized Heinecke.

Might the Latinized German have been an effort to ward off prejudice against Germans during and after the two WWs? I remember my WWII veteran father's referring to German American friends as "Dutchmen" so as not to confront reality.

Latinized names among those who could write in the 1400s-1700s made sense, because Latin was THE scholarly language. But now? It seems archaic.

Galfridus

I was recently googling around, trying to find out why 'so many' Dutch surnames sound Latin (end in 'ius')-- found nothing in regular articles even to support my observation. However I found this little Google 'scrap' which states such names are fairly common in German, also prevalent in Dutch and Swedish. This writer says too that the names were originally taken by academics in the 1500's-1700's.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bethree5,

Good find, B35!

Latinized names among those who could write in the 1400s-1700s made sense, because Latin was THE scholarly language. But now? It seems archaic.

The family I was talking about changed the name of the spelling of their name in the 17th or 18th century. They were related to a famous German jurisprudence scholar. Although I know of folks changing their names during WW1, they did not latinize them. Battenberg became Mountbatten and Sax-Coburg-Gotha became Windsor.

I guess I am confused about what exactly it is you're asking, Galfridus. That a 12th century writer of Welsh background came to be know as Galfridus Monemutensis does not seem remarkable to me. His extant writings are in Latin (Historia Regum Britanniae and Vita Merlini). His Norman overlords may have called him Jauffry and a Welshman may have called him Gruffuth ap Artur, if they ever met face-to-face. (Many assume that he could read Welsh, as he says that he translated his Historia out of a Welsh manuscript.) I'm not sure if Karl der Grosse called himself Charlesmagne or Karl.

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As I was trying to explain on the chat

It's hard to do a lot of complex explaining, or explanations that take a lot of words, on chats, particularly when there are more than two. We do pretty well, though, considering...

Bethree, that is an interesting question about "ius" Dutch names. I've wondered, too, since I have a fair amount of Dutch in me. [Interestingly, my father's father was Irish, and my mother's father was Dutch...and, yet, our family seems to be considered Irish. Also, my father's mother was German and my mother's mother was English. Yet...Irish it is.]

about "ius" Dutch names

To throw into the mix is the fact that most Dutch did not have family names until the late 18th century. Only the nobler families did. Same with most Ashkenazic Jews in the Russian Empire. Basically a deadline was set, and the heads of family choose surnames for their families. Some people chose surnames that were used by some famous co-citizens: e.g., Ginzburg (in all its many forms) because there was a famous Russian Jewish family in banking and they were allowed to live outside the Pale of Settlement in Moscow at an early time. All the Latinized names (ending in -us, -ius. -or, etc.) were up for grabs and they gave an air of scholastic to the ones who chose them.

As for the question of ethnicity, it seems to go through the male line and depends a lot on your last name. At least in Europe and the States.

Yes, I think you are right about the "male" line, z. It has something to do with the namesake, I think. Annoying, though. On my Dad's side, I've really noticed the focus on namesake. One uncle left his farm only to the boys (my two brothers; not to me and my two sisters) in the family, so that it would stay in the family name. Funny thing is, one brother didn't marry and the other only has a girl. So it won't have a Coen namesake anyway. My father, having just died, made my brother the executor of the estate, even though it would have made more sense for one of the sisters to be the executor. My brother is doing a good job, though. I guess I come from a sexist family.

That is interesting about surnames, z. Funny about the "air of scholastic." I do remember when Latin was the "scholarly" language to take in school.

The reference to Dutch names and of the name Coen reminds me of a holiday (vacation) I spent in the then Yugoslavia in the late 60s. We met a Dutch lad about our age and teamed up with him. In a way, we felt a little sorry for him because he was the only Dutch person to have booked at our hotel.

His name was Coen (or Cohen) and he anxiously stressed to us that he wasn't Jewish. As if we cared anyway... If anything we were a little affronted he should think it mattered to us.

It does though show that anti-Semitism wasn't dead even in the Holland of the 60s, which was of course only 20 years on from the Holocaust.

Funny, arnie. When I was in my early 20s, I'd not correct people when they assumed I was Jewish. So it was just the opposite. At the time I wasn't, but I wanted to be. Then of course Shu came along.

The Dutch part of my ancestors (my mother's father's name) is Schenck. So glad I don't have that name now because it is pronounced as "Skank."