Mar
02
This morning I decided to spend a little bit of time researching the origins of my family names. This included a quick phone call to my mother (I have enough names to keep track of already) and an hour with Google. Here's what I came up with:Mother's Father: Spelling changed from a French word for "cart," or the occupational name for a cartwright. Records found place the name in Quebec in the mid-1600s.
Mother's Mother: Of Irish origin, roughly translating to "the son of a champion."
Father's Father: Likely of Austrian or French origin, changing its spelling in the 1700s. The most famous man with this name was, apparently, a complete fool. He was an evangelist and prominent proponent of flat earth theories. In fact, he offered a widely publicized $5000 challenge for anyone to disprove flat earth theory. This was around 1900. He also frequently predicted the end of the world; his predictions that the end would come in 1923, 1927, 1930, and 1935 were all incorrect. He had stated that he would live to 120 due to his diet of Brazil nuts and buttermilk, but fell short of his goal by approximately 48 years.
Father's Mother: Its meaning denotes the status of a feudal tenant and is German and Jewish (western Ashkenaic) in origin.
