Re: Asian migration to Scandinavia

--- In cybalist@... s.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@... > wrote:
>
> At 6:03:44 PM on Sunday, September 14, 2008, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@... s.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> At 5:12:30 PM on Sunday, September 14, 2008, Andrew Jarrette
> >> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> 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?
>
> No, not really: whatever it may have been originally, it's
> now been an inherited surname for many generations and has
> no meaning beyond (in most cases) 'my father's surname was
> <Campbell>'. And I really don't much care what my ancestors
> were called; that was their problem.
>
> > Who wants to be known as "Andrew Crookedmouth" (or, say,
> > "Andrew Bignose")? "Andrew Battlefield" at least has some
> > suggestion of the glory of battle.
>
> But even if you were <Andrew Campbell>, you wouldn't be
> 'Andrew Crookedmouth' .

What I wrote: "Well, I'd much rather take "battlefield" over "crooked
> >>> mouth" for the !!meaning!! of name of my ancestors, untrue
> >>> though it may be" - see exclamation marks around "meaning".
>
> [...]
>
> > But apparently even my name "Jarrette"
>
> It's most likely of patronymic origin, from either of the
> names whose standard forms are now <Gerald> and <Gerard>.
> It's possible but rather less likely that it's a feminine
> form of the French surname <Jarret>, a diminutive of <jarre>
> 'jar', metonymic for a maker or seller of such things.

The latter looks more plausible to me, and it's far better than "Leg"
or the other meanings (yes, only French <jarret> has the meanings
"hock, ham, hollow of the knee" (also Ital <garretto> "ankle, hock"
and Sp <jarrete> "calf of the leg"), but knowing that it came from
Celtic, I wrongly assumed the Celtic words had the same meaning as the
French). I think the feminized ending was probably a mistaken
spelling arising either in the Caribbean or in England, to which
country the name looks to me like it must have been exported, from
France, presumptively its original home. Then logically I guess some
Jarret(t)(e) s migrated from England to the West Indies. But then again
Trinidad was at one time a French colony so it's just as plausible
that some French folk migrated to Trinidad, from which I might be
descended -- I don't know if I'm directly descended from any of these
or whether their slaves took on the last names of their masters (my
father is quite dark, so it doesn't look like there's any French or
English in him, apart maybe from his pointed narrow nose, very
un-negrotic) .

AJ

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