Research Tools - Google

Since 1980 the population of Vermont has increased by 100,000 people and has surpassed the population of the District of Columbia, which has declined over the same period. How do I know? By entering the word 'population' followed by a state, in this case VT, in the Google search bar; hit enter and there is a nice graphic to illustrate the population trend over the past 30 years. Down the side are the fifty states, click on as many as you like and the graph is populated by colored lines. I find this fascinating, I am a statistician by trade and inclination, but the broader point is this is immediately available through Google.
Recent search engine releases have been extolled for their intelligence, type in a question and you will get the answer. Unfortunately this approach relies on the interpretation of the question. Google, on the other hand, have quietly built a library of tools with which to mine the internet. First let us look at the basic search engine. As most of you know, to locate a page with the information you require all you have to do is type your query in the search bar and, hey presto, there's a list of pages in order of relevance. Well, not quite. You are looking for a night of blues in Hartford; you come up with the history of a defunct NFL team. How about the new Terminator movie, type in salvation and that's probably what you won't get. The point is you have to know how to ask. Looking for salsa but not the dance then type in salsa -dance, if you want a specific phrase, who said “come up and see me sometime”, then put it in single quotes 'come up and see me sometime' . Typing electric cars means that both words have to be on the site suggested whereas electric OR car will give you any site with electric or car on it. Only trust information from university sites? then type Ulysses Grant site:edu.
In fact there is a whole host of qualifiers you can use to narrow down your search. Google recognizes categories, well, the most common search categories anyway. To go back to our night at the movies, simply type in movie:Salvation or maybe movie:20001 if you want a listing in your zip code. There are plenty of other qualifiers; music:pink floyd or book:frankenstein. I find this very useful, now I do not have to remember umpteen web-sites or scan down a list of bookmarks longer than an Egyptian scroll. Next to the computer I have a page of reference commands, like a cheat-sheet, for IBM share quotes type in stocks:IBM or for the weather in Boston type weather:Boston MA or just the zip.
And all those numbers; luckily numbers are a computers bread and butter. Type in the VIN number from a car (useful when you are buying a used vehicle and you want to check the provenance) and Google recognizes it and displays the info. Just sent Aunt Joan a package and you want to know where it is, enter the tracking number and bingo! Just received an annoying call, type in the number 2125551234 and it will tell you that is a number used in the movies (the 555 exchange is never used except for information. Conversely, if you are interested in news in general from Iceland then type location:Iceland or source:Reykjavik Grapevine, and yes there is a newspaper with that title. I hope the above will allow you to focus more on the content and less on the often frustrating process of getting the information you want!

History of Names - III

European family names are almost invariably derived from occupation, location, characteristic or patronymic. This haphazard approach has produced several million Western surnames. This contrasts greatly with East Asia where a 1990 study showed that 200 family names accounted for 96% of the Chinese population with the other 4% having less than another 500 names! Obviously there are an awful lot of people with the same surname. Family names go back in China over 2500 years, long before the average European bothered with such niceties. Because of the feudal nature of early Chinese society a system of two surnames evolved, the family name and the clan name, shi and xing respectively. The xing names were the different members of the royal family, in essence the tribal overlord. As society became more complex so families adopted a shi name to show their status within the clan.
Any study of Chinese surnames by the west is complicated by the fact that the Chinese use characters rather than an alphabet, thus it is difficult to have a literal translation. Furthermore every region of Chino has it's own dialect which has developed into almost unique languages, yet all are based on the same Chinese characters. This, for the lay person like myself, explains why John Woo, the director, and Jonathan Ngo, the author, both have the same family name. In some instances you could almost measure the power of a particular clan by the number of people with the name. The Kuang family were generals and statesmen of great importance during the Han dynasty but with the advent of the Ming era they went into decline. The people of the home province of Henan had adopted the name but, without court influence, became poorer and joined the diaspora. Today 5 million people are spread throughout the world with the surname Kuang, Kwong or Fong (including Hiram Fong the only Chinese-American to serve in the Senate and run for President.), all variations, but very few except for a village or two, in China itself.
Somewhere about 1000 A.D., during the early Song dynasty, somebody decided to make a list of 'acceptable' names. Written in the form of a rhyming poem with 8 characters per line (sounds rather a boring concept to Western ears, a little like reciting a telephone directory), this treatise became known as the Book of a Hundred Family Surnames. Maybe the author was trying to project a snappy image as it actually contained 411 names, an ironic number considering. Since expanded to 504 names this is where all Chinese names have traditionally come from. The first four names, unsurprisingly, are Zhao, Qian, Sun and Li, derived, respectively, from the Song Emperors family name, the King and Queen of Wuyue and the King of Tang. The surname Li is now the most common family name in the world, comprising nearly 10% of China's population. Often Anglicized (more correctly, Romanized, as English uses the Latin alphabet) as Lee, remember Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, the name is also Medieval English, denoting someone who lived by a meadow.
Just to make things even more complicated there were periods of name taboo. Generally these occurred during the reign of an Emperor who decreed that no-one could have the same name as him. During the reign of Liu Zhuang an Imperial decree forced anyone with the surname Zhuang to change it to Yan. Conversely, during the Tang Dynasty, the Emperors bestowed the name Li (the family name of the Tang royalty) upon senior officials as a form of state honor. The names do have meanings, they are represented by a Chinese character (in some instances two characters, though this is becoming rare). The name Li means plum; Chan, as in Jackie Chan, is Cantonese for Chen which means stale, not a flattering name. Mao, as in the revered Chairman, means hair or fur, presumably his ancestors were not balding.
Most people probably know that Chinese names are written in the reverse order from Westerners. Jackie Chan was born in Hong Kong and named Chan Kong Sang, which, oddly enough, means Chan born in Hong Kong. If a Chinese take a Western name, such as Jet Lee, then they adopt the Western order whereas Yao Ming, the famous NBA player is actually Mr. Yao. There are exceptions, of course, Yo-Yo Ma the world famous cellist, is Mr. Ma, and the Hong Kong politician Martin Lee Chu-Ming is actually Mr. Martin (Western name) Chu-Ming (Chinese given name) Lee (family name). Another filip to chaos is the old Chinese custom of a rich bride and poor(er) groom keeping the bride's family name. This custom, known as ru zhui was intended as a means for influential families without a male heir to continue the family name; the grooms family probably felt that the rise in status was worth a name.
The Chinese characters are used throughout East Asia and thus it is no surprise to find the same names in Korean and Vietnamese but with wholly different pronunciations and thus Westernized form. In Korea there are roughly 250 surnames, but 5 of them account for well over half of the population. The five most common family names are Kim, Lee (with variants like Yi and Rhee), Park, Chung (often Anglicised to Young) and Choi. These are all tribal names often identifying which part of the peninsular the family originated in. Vietnamese family names are even more limited, Ngyuen is the surname of an estimated 40% of Vietnamese! Similar to the Chinese the top three names were all Kings at one time or another and were adopted so that families could show their loyalty. In fact the Vietnamese, like Americans, have a family name, a middle name and a given name; unlike their Western counterparts, however, the middle name was almost always Thi for women and Van for men, there has been a slight broadening of the selection in recent years but the list is still very short. Given the similarity of their middle and family names it is not surprising that Vietnamese are customarily addressed by their given name, for example Ngyuen Tan Dung is addressed as Mr. Dung, makes sense to me.

History of Names - Part II

In my previous blog I discussed occupational family names, today I will deal with patronymis (and matronymics!) A family name can tell us a great deal about a person. The fact that one of your ancestors in the distant past was named John and thus your family name is Johnson would seem of little moment. However we could don Sherlock Holmes (mythical) deerstalker and infer quite a lot from such an innocuous clue. John is an English name and as the majority of English family names or surnames were applied in the late Middle Ages we can be fairly certain that it comes from Medieval English stock. This type of family name is term a patronymic and, oddly enough, accounts for six (seven including Washington) of the first ten U.S. Presidents; Adams, Jefferson – son of Geoffrey, Madison – son of Maud, Adams, Harrison, and Jackson. Washington's family originated in Washington, the settlement of 'Wassa', in north-east England, and is therefore technically a patronymic. Monroe's family once lived at the mouth of a river in Scotland. John Tyler probably came from a family of roofer's, Tyler is an occupational name like Slater. The exception, Van Buren, was of poor Dutch heritage with the equivalent English name of Cotter, or a tenant farmer who lived in a cottage. Madison is actually a matronymic, a descendant of a matriarch. Other examples of this are Molson, from Moll or Mary; Emmett, from Emma; Marriot, from Mary; and Tillotson, from a nickname for Matilda.
Patronymics are common throughout the western world. Almost invariably a name ending in '-ian' indicates an Armenian from the Parthian word for son of. Mac as a prefix, as in MacDonald, MacDougal, MacDuff, is the Scots Gaelic for son of while the Irish foreshortened it to O' or of, as in O'Reilly, O'Donnell etc. Another similar Irish variant is KilPatrick, or KilBride, meaning of Patrick or Bridget. The prefix Fitz, FitzHerbert for example, denotes the descendant of a 'natural son' or child born out of wedlock. Maud, who fought a civil war for the throne of England in the 12th century, referred to her son, King Henry II, as Henry FitzEmpress as she had once been married to the Holy Roman Emperor. Anybody with the prefix Fitz- probably has some noble blood as the peasants rarely bothered with the primarily legal distinction of marriage.
Slavic countries regularly use patronymics, in Bulgaria and the Ukraine and Russia -ov is appended to the name either as Ivanov (male) Ivanova (female) or Ivanovi (family/tribe). There is a defining grammar to these names, for example, Petrovski would be son of and descendant of Peter. The family name Salomonova would indicate a female Russian Jew, a descendant of the tribe of Solomon, just as Salomon Brothers was the Anglicized surname. In Russia, giving your full name is like handing over a small family tree!
Staying in Eastern Europe, the Greek surname ending in iou is most likely a patronymic. Sometimes the name may be occupational as well, Papageorgiou would be the son of a priest named George. Papa- denotes priest, Archi- denotes a leader while Mastro was a merchant. Just like English names such as Short or Brown, the Greeks may precede their patronymic with a description such as Chodro, fat, or Palaio, wise. Italians, who incidentally claim to have the most surnames of any country in the world, 350,000 at the last count, predominantly have patronymics using 'of', Carlo di Marco, or Eduardo de Filipo. Interestingly, Ferrari, as in the company producing the wonderful hand-made cars, means Smith in Italian, so the skills were obviously handed down. The most common Italian name, Rossi (or Russo) means red, a very distinctive hair coloring in Italy.
In general Jewish family names were foisted upon the people to enable the authorities to keep accurate civic records. Owing to the general European Anti-Semitism of those times Jews adopted occupational names in the local language, making them indistinguishable from the surrounding population; the preponderance of Jews in what is now Germany, Austria and Poland resulted in many occurrences of Schmidt for Smith, and Müller, or Mueller for Miller. Quite often the authorities gave them names to mark them, Benjamin D'Israeli, the famous British Prime-Minister was descended from 'people of the tribe of Israel'. Similarly the surname Levi denotes of the tribe of Levy, a form of patronymic. Cohen or Kohn do derive from Hebrew, being the word for priest, but are generally applied to descendants of Aaron.
German names took much the same course as English, occupational names are common, Muller, Schmidt, etc., as were descriptive names. Because of the many Jewish settlers in German speaking states Klein is thought to be Jewish whereas it simply means short. Schwartzkopf means black head and refers to the hair, in English this would be Mr. Black. Von, correctly speaking, is only used by people claiming German nobility but people were often known by a nearby landmark; Rosenblum would be the rose-garden and Engels, far from denoting a heavenly prodigy, more likely referred to an inn called the Angel. Patronymics could infer religion, Mendel was a Jewish given name whereas Fredericks or Heinrickson were more likely German Protestant.
Thus a name can tell us a great deal about a person, or at least their ancestors, DuPont were French Huguenots originally living near the bridge; Bayer, on the other hand came from Bavaria. Often you have to look carefully at a name as most of our ancestors were illiterate. Shakespeare is spelled at least 21 different ways ( more if you include William) and probably means a belligerent person, although it could be a bawdy term for a womanizer. David Jansen probably has Dutch antecedents, Jan being the variant of John. The etymology of names is endlessly fascinating and please feel free to comment on this article; if you have a question about your name, or a friend's, I will be happy to research it: go to dgef.us/ask.

History of Names - Part I

This posting deals with primarily English names and as such temporarily ignores Roman naming conventions, watch this spot for more on this subject.
Family names, or surnames, are principally derived from four sources; work, looks, ancestry and habitat. This is apparent from a look at a list of common surnames in America; the top ten are Smith, Jones, Williams, Brown, Davies, Miller, Wilson, Moore and Taylor. Prior to Medieval times people simply had a given name, Will, John etc. In a village this was not generally a problem. As people moved to towns, however, some way of distinguishing between the more common names became necessary and thus children were referred to John's son or Will's son (note the implied sexism; never Maud's girl or Eleanor's daughter). With the advent of journeymen and population growth even this became unmanageable. In Wales, where David was always popular, Davies or Davis had to be further qualified. Another distinguishing characteristic was required. This was a time when trades were passed from father to son and thus John the Baker was distinguishable from John the Miller.
Every village and most manors had there own smith which accounts for the popularity of that name. Miller, Baker, Brewer, Butcher and Taylor are self-explanatory as are Shepherd, Drover and Farmer (not as common as one might suppose simply because most peasants were villeins, akin to a serf), Freeman was as likely as Farmer as both owned their land. It is strange to think that James Bond came from peasant farmers or bondsmen, just as Cotter came from a cottage dweller with a small-holding. Much can be learnt of Medieval life by studying these names, Cattle were a rarity so there are few names associated with them but Pound came from a keeper of animals (in the pound) and Mathers wer mowers or grass-cutters. Castle or Manor life spawned many names, the Butler was in charge of bottles, a Chamberlain was actually in charge of the main bedroom, not a very auspicious post one would think, a Reeve was the local law enforcement, the Baileyman was in the keep, a Banister was a basket maker, the Sargeant was a soldier and, of course, Archer, Page and Knight. The Spenser (or Spencer) took the provisions around to the workers in the fields, overseen by the Steward. The Porter was the doorkeeper and Ward was the guard. Parker was the gamekeeper and Mr. Hayward guarded the forest or enclosure (for hunting). Higher up was the Ryder who guarded the forest on a horse.
If the man died, at war or through pestilence, and had no sons or they were too young then often the woman took over the business, Baxter is a female baker, Brewster, a woman brewer, is actually more common owing to the high masculine mortality rate. Ms. Dexter denoted that the woman was a dyer. Wright meant a maker of, thus Cartwright made carts while Carter used them for transport. Chapman was a corruption of Ceapman, pronounced Cheapman, a merchant, used more to describe his wares than his personality one hopes! A cut above was a Mercer, a more expensive trader. Mr. Chandler once made candles while Barker was a tanner, as indeed was Mr. Tanner. Arkwright applied to a chest maker whereas Carpenter was specifically a carriage maker and Cooper was a barrel-maker, assisted by the Hooper who put the bands around them. The Joiner put the furniture together after the Tuner had rounded the wood on the lathe and the Sawyer had cut it.
Many people were occupied making clothes, the Causer made leggings after the Fuller has softened the coarse cloth or the Walker has trod on the damp cloth, also to make it pliable. Snyder is Dutch for a tailor or stitcher of coats. Weaver and Spinner are self-explanatory, though Webster is also a weaver (I'm sure old Noah new that). In the world of entertainment we had Sangster, a songmaker, as well as Singer, and Saylor, nothing nautical as one may expect, but rather an acrobat or dancer (in the days when sailors had to climb the masts this talent was very useful and thus the term was applied.) The stringer was invaluable, attending to the instruments.
There are many more, Mr Tinker mended kettles and pots, although not the kind made by the Potter; both Tyler and Slater worked on the roof while Bishop and Dean may not have been so 'elevated' as the name was applied to their graces servants as well. So look around at your circle of friends and see how many of them have names denoting their ancestors occupation you will be surprised, oh and Mr. Summers, or Sumner, may not have had a sunny disposition, he was the summoner to court.

Medieval Towns of England - Bideford, Barnstaple and Dartmoor

The South-West corner of England looks like a long finger pointing across the Atlantic, this is Cornwall and Devon. Isolated geographically, the region, none the less, has a history stretching back into the mists of time often independent from what went on the alleged capital. Phoenicians traded with the tin miners of North Cornwall 3000 years ago, while Dartmoor in central Devon contains remains from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Ages. Barnstaple, or nearby Bideford (9 miles to the west), are ideal towns to stay in to savor the delights of the surrounding area. The rail journey, from Paddington Station, London is three and a half hours with 5 trains a day for the remarkable fare of $38. Less than 200 miles distance, as long as you can deal with driving on the left, a leisurely drive is an excellent alternative. A well-planned route would take you past such sights as Stonehenge and Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill.

Barnstaple is a small town of just over 30,000 people, having swallowed several local villages. Traditionally the market town of the region it claims to be the oldest borough in England. The name derives from the its position as a licensed 'staple port' in the Middle Ages, meaning that it could export one of the staple commodities, in this case wool; while the Barn prefix comes from the Roman Barum. At the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, the first complete English census and survey, it was so important that it had it's own mint. Built at the lowest fordable place on the River Taw it made an excellent port. It's status as a market town continues today. Pannier Market, a glass roof on iron pillars, is longer than a football field. Built in 1855 it is still enormously popular; situated on Butcher's Row across from a row of 10 shops (only two are butchers) with pilasters of Bath stone.
Bideford, on the River Torridge, is another delightful, historic town. The Long Bridge, 24 spans, was built in the 13th century and in Elizabethan times the port was the third busiest in England, primarily due to its western position. Sir Walter Raleigh shipped tobacco there, although he was not the first, Columbus had already introduced it to Europe. In 1588 the Spanish Armada set sail, a vast flotilla from the greatest sea-faring nation of that time, it's aim was to defeat Britain. A strong wind blew the fleet up the North Sea, watched with grave trepidation by the people on shore. North of Scotland the Armada was destroyed by a violent storm and the survivors limped down the west coast, some to be driven ashore at Bideford. The marooned mariners intermingled with locals and today many from Bideford claim Spanish heritage. Charles Kingsley wrote 'Westward Ho!' here, probably looking out across the Atlantic. So popular did the book become that a seaside village, with wonderful sands, was built with the same name, the only place in England to have an exclamation point after it's name!

To the south is Dartmoor, a windswept, seemingly desolate, granite upland. It covers nearly 400 square miles with numerous hills, known as tors, the highest being 2,037 feet. Made famous by Conan Doyle in 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' Sherlock Holmes paints an evocative picture of gloom and danger. Walking across the moor is akin to stepping into pre-history or an alien landscape (much of 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' was filmed here). Settled at a time when the climate was warmer and trees covered the moor, there are many standing stones, kistvaens (burial chambers), stone circles, cairns and rows, most from the bronze age; there are an estimated 5000 hut circles, indicating a high population. As the trees were cleared and burnt so the population disseminated and by Roman times it was largely deserted. In the Middle Ages hardy shepherds drifted back up on the moor and numerous legends, such as the headless horseman or the pack of ghostly hounds, sprang up around Jays Grave, Bowermans Nose and Childes Tomb. Tin has been mined for at least 2000 years here and again it is interesting to visit the 12th century mines.