Re: [tied] speaking PIE

At 2:26:08 PM on Saturday, July 9, 2005, Gordon Barlow
wrote:

> The origins of personal names is a field not well
> served by etymologists, professional or amateur. The vast
> majority of surnames-researchers confine themselves to
> dredging up homonyms, and (or therefore) their research
> produces little more than basic folk-etymology.

This is simply false. Either you've not seen much in the
way of serious onomastics, or you've failed to appreciate
what you have seen.

> John means..., and Henry means..., and surname Baker means
> an ancestor was a baker, and so on and on, all announced
> with a certainty that is just plain irritating.

This is a description of baby-name books and their surname
equivalents, not serious onomastics.

> It is more likely that personal names (families' surnames
> and individuals' given names) began at the very dawn of
> speech.

No, it isn't. The European development of hereditary family
surnames in the modern style can be observed in the
historical record. The earliest examples, from northern
Italy, are only about 1200 years old, and even today only a
minority of Icelanders have family names. Between late
antiquity and, say, the year 1000 CE the vast majority of
Europeans bore a single name.

Brian