Today’s topic is one suggested to us via conversations on twitter, sparked by this fascinating map (found here) of the meanings of the most popular surnames in different European countries. I pointed out that as a surname ‘Martin’ means ‘child of Martin’, rather than ‘of Mars’ (a reasonable approximation of the etymology of Martin, the given name). It’s a minor point, but an important one, because it illustrates how one and the same element can have different semantic content in different contexts.
This sparked questions about why in some cultures you’d find, e.g., Martin while in others it would be Martins and in others Martinson, all to represent the same concept, ‘child of Martin’. While strictly speakings bynames are beyond the scope of the Dictionary, bynames which are derived from given names are close enough to our purview that we thought it would be interesting to…
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