Origin of your name

[Mr Hero]

I've seen a few posts floating around on Facebook. Although I never tried it myself, I still thought it was kinda cool to see what others were posting. Then some red flags started popping up.
-Friend named Summer gets a result that's nothing like the season
-Friend named Tim gets his interpretation broken up as T and Im
-Friend Tim and friend Jared both have the same meaning in the same language.

And people keep gobbling this up. I don't get it.

[Bloodsoul]

All I'm aware is that my name at least originates from "Old French" (being the name of one of William the Conqueror's sons).

Though I've heard that "Summer" may or may not have some connection with "Sumer/Sumeria."

"That's 'T' for 'T' and 'im' for 'im'! Tim!" — Clyde Crashcup

[KabeRinnaul]

Or you can just look it up.

[Gravekeeper]

The origins of first names are pretty easy and wildly available. Last names are a tad trickier. That said, anything that emerges from beneath the social fever swamp that is Facebook should be suspect in its historical accuracy. ;p

[ChynaRose]

Considering the fact that my step-brother posted one of those only instead of an actual name he used the first 10 letters of the alphabet and managed to get a result (apparently Abcde Fghij means Lovely Men), I'm pretty sure that it's just a random word generator.

Personally I think people keep posting it because they get a kick out of the random and sometimes wacky results.

[Tama]

My name's meaning tends to be pretty standard whenever I look it up on things that aren't that particular new app.

Of course I have one friend who keeps putting in things like "Asswipe" and such and getting equally nice results as the Abcde up there.

[Estil]

I had one rather embarrassing incident when during a role call during a local community college class (I went their for summer school credit while I went to the University of KY during the regular school years) the instructor asked (and only to me), "What nationality are you?" and being totally unprepared for the question I was like "Uh, I'm not really of any nationality...American I guess?" :/ Boy did I feel so stupid (after all everyone has a nationality of some sort right?)...

I also hate HATE it when I'm called ma'am on the phone (even if I don't say my name I apparently sound like a woman on the phone for some reason...)...I know I should be proud of my name being from my late grandfather who received a Purple Heart in WWII but still I often wish I had an easy name like Bill or George.

I mean maybe my heritage/culture isn't something you'll find in a multicultural festival or anything and I don't really know for sure what my ancestry is (all the good genealogy websites are apparently subscription based) but I am proud to be a Kentuckian just the same and we do in fact have a distinctive culture/identity just like any other state or country.

[AccountingDrone]

Well, one of the familial names translates to 'Trotter' [a type of horse] which always gave me giggles watching CutThroat Island [there is a scene where Frank Langela's character is fantasizing about his future, calling upon his henchman to do something - "Trotter, oh Trotter..." =) Then we devolve into hm...Wildman, Sanford, Jones, MacCourtie and Phip for English based names. And those are just a handful, we have scrummed back to the late 1100s in one line mainly to see how far back we could get actual documentation. The Brit lines tended to get fairly murky which I find odd because the destruction of church property and records in the whole PommesFrite region should have made it harder to track but it didn't [pommes frites - Belgium, France, Holland, Allsace, Lorraine, Germany. A bunch of families mainly swapped women around sealing treaties over the centuries. Seriously dudes, haven't you heard about inbreeding?!]

[Aragarthiel]

I just had a conversation about this kind of thing with a good friend of mine. He likes rubbing it in that he's a quarter Korean (and as such calls himself Asian), but my genealogy is mostly mixed European so I can't really say that I'm one nationality over another (so I consider myself American). It's likely that Irish makes up the bulk of my ancestry but I also have German, Scottish, Cherokee, and Hungarian blood (though at the time my ancestors left Hungary the area was still Transylvania, that fun fact has led to some pretty interesting conversations). Some of my distant relatives are from England as well but I'm not sure if they're blood related or married into the family.

[protege]

I actually know very little about my heritage.

For years, I knew that my last name is Norwegian. Roughly translated, it means "eastern house." A bit odd, since the town they hailed from (Stavanger) is in the *western* part of Norway Then I find out a few years ago that my grandfather wasn't my dad's real dad. So I actually know very little about that part of the family.

I do know that his mom's (my grandmother) family was Irish. They were originally French, but came to Ireland (via England) during the Conquest. Many of them later left during the famines and general unrest during that time....and at least one received Canadian citizenship. How? Before the family arrived in the US, they came through Canada...and he made himself known. So yes, I can tell all the Canada jokes I want

On mom's side, again, there's some Irish, Welsh, English, and German/Austrian. From what I understand, very little is known about the German/Austrian family. Mostly because it was a very common name, and those countries were more or less the same because of various alliances and wars throughout the centuries. Not surprising, is that most records have been lost.

Back on topic, the "origin of your name" thing on Facebook seems to be pretty random. I've put in random letters, or "Ass Twinkie" but still generated some rather amusing results