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n Once upon a time, I used to teach Adult Literacy andnsometimes, just for the craic and the look on their poor faces, I wouldnannounce to the students that the subject of the day’s session was going to benAnthroponomastics. There would be blank looks, there would be looks of horror,nsometimes there would be looks of antagonism and very often there were looks ofnconsternation. I could almost see the words,
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n“What the hell is he going onnabout now?”n
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nforming in the very minds of the students. After all, these werenadults who, for whatever reasons, had not learned to read or write to anfunctional level, and were in college to rectify that deficiency.
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nSo, what wasnthat big word again, what does it mean and why do we need to learn it? Mynstudents were not stupid, far from it, they had just been disadvantaged in thenpast, and I saw no reason to treat them as gormless just because they could notnread or write. So I gave them the same session that I also gave as part of thenteacher-training course I taught to graduate tutors but just stripped out allnthe technical language, apart from the title of the thing – anthroponomastics.
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nIf any of you have a smattering of Greek, you may have already worked out thatnit means ‘the study of the names of people’, and we are all curiousnabout why our names are what they are. There are regional and culturalndifferences about human naming systems but here in Western Europe we tend tonuse one of four variants for our surnames.
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nThe first of these is the patronymicnmethod; you are called after your father’s, or another male ancestor’s, name.nSo if your father was called William, your surname would be Williamson or maybenWilson, or sometimes, using the archaic Norman prefix Fitz (cognate with filsn– son), Fitzwilliam. In Scots, the Mac or Mc prefixnserves the same purpose – MacDonald is the son (or descendant) of Donald. InnIrish, it’s O’ – O’Brien is the son (or grandson) of Brien. In Welsh,nit’s ap – ap Hywel (or Powell) is the son (etc) of Hywel. You can thrownin rough analogies to other languages – ibn serves for Arabic, Bar-nin Jewish, –ovich in Russian and –escu in Romanian, for instance.n(Sometimes, in some cultures, the reverse happens, where a parent becomes knownnby the name(s) of their offspring – this is called teknonymy).
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nThe second method of naming is by occupation. Thenfamily name derives from the job an ancestor once did, or what you do now –nhence Baker, Gardener, Archer. Some of these occupational names arenhistorically interesting – a Cooper was a barrel-maker, a Wright was any makernof things, so Wheelwright made wheels, Cartwright made carts and wagons. AnFletcher was a person who fletched, that is put the feathers (or fletchings) onnarrows. An Arrowsmith made the arrows. The simple suffix ‘s’ made anpossessive – hence Roberts was someone who ‘belonged’ to a master callednRobert, Williams was the servant (or slave) of William.
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nThe third method comes from the attribute(s) of anperson. It is almost a type of nickname (which comes from an eke-name,nwhere eke is Old English for also, and where a morphemenmisdivision has been applied – what’s called metanalysis), and is used tondescribe a person. This takes such common forms as Long or Longfellow (for antall man), Redhead, Armstrong or Small. It’s distinctive way of avoidingnconfusion – John Long and John Little are unlikely to be mistaken for eachnother.
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nThe final method is based on places. It may be wherenyou were born, or where you now live. It can be the actual name of the place,nor it may be a description of a place, and it may be very precise or it may benquite general. My own name – Hartley – takes this form (the clearing wherendeer are found), as do such names as Bridges, Green, Park or Sands.
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nThis method of engaging students works very welln(which is why it was in the teacher-training course, as an example of how tonget students interested), as it applies to everyone, quite simply because wenall have a name, and that name means something. Examples of each sort of thenfour methods can be found within the class itself. It involves thinking whichnis not reliant on the ability to read or write, but can be drawn from lifenexperience – you don’t need to have to be able to read to work out that Smithnis a worker who makes things, nor to provide examples of various –smithsn(Blacksmith, Silversmith, Gunsmith etc).
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nIt introduces the idea that words cannbe built up from smaller elements, and that by learning these smaller elementsnyou can then use them to build longer words (all that stuff about syllables,nmorphemes, suffixes, prefixes and so on), and that words themselves havenhistories and meanings (etymology etc). In a follow up class, I would do thensame again but with place names (toponomastics), and pull apart familiarnplace names into their elements, showing how history plays such an importantnpart in our current lives – the preponderance of Nordic elements in Northernntoponyms was a springboard for a discussion on the Viking invasions, forninstance.
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nA favourite exercise was to see if, as a class, we could come up withnan example of every alphabetical instance of the –ton suffix in Englishnplace names, from Accrington and Bolton onwards (you have to cheat – Euxton,nnear Chorley, is a good cheat for ‘x’ and you have to pass on ‘j’nand ‘z’, but this is also a good starting point for another discussionnof the history and development of the English language). I’ve observed otherntutors using this approach in literacy classes and I never saw a bad sessionnwhen it was done properly, with plenty of preparation.
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nI’ve also been unfortunate enough to witnessnexceptionally proficient literacy tutors deliberately driven out of thenprofession for adopting such a similar student-centred, multi-disciplinarynapproach to andragogy, simply because those sympathies did not happen to fitnneither into the empire-building enterprises of certain ambitious individualsnnor in the self-interested fiscal considerations of other ‘acknowledgednexperts’ in the highly lucrative business of private sector consultancies, butnthen again that’s an all together different kettle of fish. However, there arenthose who know the price of everything and the value of nothing and,nunfortunately, they will always be amongst us.
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nPersonal rant – It’s been one of those days. Normalnservice will be resumed soon. Thank you. (And sorry for the lack of pictures).
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