Quote:
Originally Posted by LucyKKG
Haha that's really funny. My family used to be Olsen, but apparently, my great-great grandfather changed it because he thought that was too common. I still have a super Norwegian last name which is pretty pronounceable, but some people think it's Jewish. (It's got "berg" in it. That means "mountain" in Norwegian.) My family was sharecroppers/tenant farmers and they took the name of the family that owned the land once they moved here.
|
I know that my family took the name with the land, and not of the husband (since that's how we did it in Norway). If I moved to Norway to live with my family, technically I could take our family name, even though I have my father's Dutch/Frisian name everyone thinks is German. If I remember right there are some people who worked our dairy in the states who are "fictive kin" and took our Americanized name. Iverson isn't our real last name, but that's how it shook out at Ellis Island due to language barriers. Oh and my cousin's husband's family has a made up name so they could get better seats at church, that cracks me up.
So really, back to the thread, I don't understand why this is an issue as there are plenty of people with hyphenated names, more than one middle name, or all kinds of variations, and they aren't targeted as a community. It seems somewhat insensitive to target one community as I know plenty of people of Hispanic/Latino descent who go by various names (middle, mother's, other) due to their naming traditions, and I know that community exists in Texas.
Hybrid Mode
