Dodgefan07
14 Apr 2012
Language / It is not possible to translate names into English or Polish! [52]
Hello Bobik,
Give them some slack, :-) Part of the problem is that hundreds of names around the world have equivalents -- due to the fact that in many European Countries, and even in some middle eastern countries, many common names have Biblical roots. Marek =Mark, Jan =John, Piotr = Peter, Lukasz = Luke, Mateusz = Matthew, Marta = Martha, etc etc.
Another factor is that lots of surnames in English were originally names of the occupation, thus Cooper, Smith, Carpenter, Tanner, Baker, etc, etc, and likewise the son of a person = Johnson, Wilson, Anderson.
Also, it is very popular for Polish people with names like Marek, or Dariusz or Michaeł, to use the English Michael, or Mark, or Darek.
Just explain that many names don't have a meaning, and so you don't translate last names as a rule.
Then, there is the added complexity of letters and sounds in POlish that don't exist in English, so recorders at Ellis Island either wrote what the name sounded like, or would substitute an English letter that they thought was close, but actually had totally different sounds. £ in a first name like £ukasz clealy looks like L but as a lower case letter, ł easily gets confused or changed with english t.
Cudziło was transcribed incorrectly as Cudzillo, which sounds more like Spanish. The root of this was "Strange or foreign".
Just explain that some names translate and some don't. :-)
Hello Bobik,
Give them some slack, :-) Part of the problem is that hundreds of names around the world have equivalents -- due to the fact that in many European Countries, and even in some middle eastern countries, many common names have Biblical roots. Marek =Mark, Jan =John, Piotr = Peter, Lukasz = Luke, Mateusz = Matthew, Marta = Martha, etc etc.
Another factor is that lots of surnames in English were originally names of the occupation, thus Cooper, Smith, Carpenter, Tanner, Baker, etc, etc, and likewise the son of a person = Johnson, Wilson, Anderson.
Also, it is very popular for Polish people with names like Marek, or Dariusz or Michaeł, to use the English Michael, or Mark, or Darek.
Just explain that many names don't have a meaning, and so you don't translate last names as a rule.
Then, there is the added complexity of letters and sounds in POlish that don't exist in English, so recorders at Ellis Island either wrote what the name sounded like, or would substitute an English letter that they thought was close, but actually had totally different sounds. £ in a first name like £ukasz clealy looks like L but as a lower case letter, ł easily gets confused or changed with english t.
Cudziło was transcribed incorrectly as Cudzillo, which sounds more like Spanish. The root of this was "Strange or foreign".
Just explain that some names translate and some don't. :-)