Re: Asian migration to Scandinavia

--- In cybalist@... s.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@... > wrote:
>
> At 5:12:30 PM on Sunday, September 14, 2008, Andrew Jarrette
> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I believe the source I got that information from mentioned
> > that priests were the tonsured ones in Old Irish society.
>
> Indeed. But not, one assumes, the only bald ones. For that
> matter, the corresponding OIr noun <máel> 'cropped head'
> also came to connate 'slave, servent', whence its use with
> the genitives of saints' names in forenames of the type
> <Máel X> 'devotee of X'.
>
> [...]
>
> > Well, I'd much rather take "battlefield" over "crooked
> > mouth" for the meaning of name of my ancestors, untrue
> > though it may be.
>
> Good grief, why? Surely the facts are more interesting, and
> in this case there's really no doubt; see the discussion in
> Black, _Surnames of Scotland_.

Good grief, can't you see why? Who wants to be known as "Andrew
Crookedmouth" (or, say, "Andrew Bignose")? "Andrew Battlefield" at
least has some suggestion of the glory of battle.
>
> In any case, even if it were from <de Campo Bello>, it
> wouldn't have anything to do with battlefields: that would
> be pretty much the exact equivalent of the English surname
> <Fairfield>.
>

Oh, I didn't know that it would have to be from <de Campo Bello"
rather than a hypothetical *Campobellum (or better *Campibellum) (I
had realized though that one would rather expect *Bellicampus as a
hypothetical "Battlefield" ; I thought perhaps right-branching
compounds could have occurred in Latin). Nevertheless "Fairfield"
sure sounds a lot more desirable than "Wrymouth" -- how embarrassing a
name! But apparently even my name "Jarrette" looks like Celtic words
meaning "hock, ham, hollow of the knee" - not especially honorific either.

AJ
>

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