What is in a name?

What is in a name...
The ancestry search continues.... What I have noticed though, is that every time a Latvian asks me what my grandfather's name was, and I say Jahn Rosenthal, they immediately say “Ah, Johnis”. The first time it happened, I thought nothing of it. By the tenth time it happened, my curiousity was aroused as to why they would say that, and I just had to find out. It turns out that there is a unique quirk to the Latvian language/culture. Names change.... That goes for first names and surnames. Everybody has a base name, but the ending on the name changes with how we use that name. The proper ending to the name depends on if we are talking to the person, about the person, of the person, possessions of the person, and on and on... Apparently there are seven different possible endings. In most of the world, our name is our name and that is all there is to it. This changing of endings of names does not just pertain to the given name. It applies to the surname also. A male Rosenthal in Latvian would be Rozentals ( the “s” is pronounced as a soft s) A female Rosenthal in Latvian would be Rozentala ( and the “a” would be pronounced. Not only would it be pronounced, but it would be written that way too. There are other rules that may apply, so that the “s” or the “a” are not added. It depends on what the context is that you are speaking of that person. So brother and sister would have two different last names. A husband and wife would have different surnames from each other. The changing of the given name has many differfent rules. As the “J” in Latvian sounds like how we use a “Y”, my name, John, could be written, Dzons, Dzona, Dzonam, Dzona (with and accent on the A that my keyboard will not let me do), Dzonu, Dzoni, Dzoniem, Dzonos, Dzonus. All those names are in essence identical Each one is a legal name of the person. Not only legal, but mandatory to use. So if we take the many variations of the given names, and throw in the variations on the surname, who are you anyway.. This variation in the spelling of words does not stop at just people names.. It applies to all formal names. Names of towns and cities vary depending on the context that you are using the name. This happened to me when I was trying to catch a bus to Aizputi.. I said Aizputi, as clearly as I could and the agent just looked at me funny.. I went away and looked it up again.. I was saying it correctly. So I wrote it down on a piece of paper.. I gave it to her and she says “Ah, Aizputi” Completely different ending on the word. Same with signage for the town... The front of the bus will say one thing, but the map will call it something totally different and spell it totally different. I have seen Riga spelled Riga and Ryga, all over the city. And each spelling is correct. To a North American, this is a totally strange strange custom. In our minds, we are permanently attached to our names, unless we go through a legal name change or marriage. That seems normal. To have many different given names and different surnames and formal names, is very confusing to us foreigners..

Now if that is not bad enough in itself, the records we are looking at where written in German, using the German alphabet. What was written down in the records would depend on if the priest or record keeper was German mother tongued or not. If it was indeed a German priest, then he would never get a handle on the name spelling, so he would do his best at writing down what he was verbally told. And what he was told, would depend on the reference point of the person giving him the name. The German mother tongue speaker also would never pick up the many accents used in the Latvian language, nor would he pick up on the different alphabet. The Latvian language has it''s own alphabet. Generally it is the same one we use, but there are a few letters missing, ( x, q) and they have a few letters that we do not use. As I mentioned earlier to get the “ch” that we use in the :”J” in John, they have to use Dz. The situation gets messier if the priest was Latvian mother tongued, and he had to write in German language, using the German alphabet. Who knows what he would spell things and write them down. The essence of the story is that my grandfather's recorded name in the Births registry could have been John, Johns, Jahn, Jahns, Jahnis, Jan, Jans, Jannis, Jurris, or several other variations, and they would all be correct. It is only when he came to a “mono-name” culture like Canada, that he would have to pick one name and run with it..

The Latvian “s” always sounds like an “s” and never a “z” as it does in Rosenthal. The language does not have the sound of “th” in it. It is no wonder that when the Latvians first established their independent status in 1919, and lost the German overlords for the first time in 600 years, that they would change the spelling of their names to suit their culute, language and alphabet. Thus the “Rosenthal” that I have known all my life has changed to “Rozental” here. What does a name mean anyway?