Marilyn's Photos - Aug 20 2025 - Wedding day is every day

 

Wedding is a surname.  It is German and  it originates in place names - Wedding or Weddingen. It is also a short form of Wederkind, with its variant Weddig. I guess that's better than having the surname "Nobody" which is rarer than "Wedding,"   One website said it found 6,830 records for the Nobody surname.  I wonder if they are all related.  What is your guess that Somebody is a surname?  I thought it could be - one article says no it isn't and in another says that there are 82 people with the surname Somebody.  Another site thinks there are 128 people with the surname, mostly in Iran.   What if you were one of the Heavens?  There are some notable people with this surname.  Heaven is a variant of Evan and is Welsh.   What surnames have fewer than 20 contemporary people holding the name afloat?  Here's what the internet site Ancestry.uk says are current "endangered" names: Miracle Dankworth Relish MacQuoid Loughty Birdwhistle Berrycloth Tumbler Other articles have different surnames that are going extinct. That's out of somewhere in the range of nine to eleven million different surnames in the world.  That number comes from a few sites. However, the AI overview gave the range of 100,000 to 750 million distinct surnames in 2020. It depends how you account for language.

The is the door to the carillon at Bok Tower, in Florida.  Don't you love a golden door?  It seems like all the answers lie within   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

April 11 - All's Well that ends well

 

The oldest English surname on record is Hatt, from East Anglia  It was mentioned in a Norman Transcript, identified as a pretty regular name in the county.  Hwita Hatt was a keeper of bees. The oldest surname in the world is claimed to be Katz - considered the initial of the two words Kohen Tsedek.  Every Katz is a priest, descending in an unbroken line from Aaron the brother of Moses, 1300 B.C..  This comes from Ripley's Believe it or not, and has no evidence.  It does seem more of a mythical sort of story. What if all the English names ending in "well" were related?   "Well - This surname suffix or word well has an English origin. It refers to a good or proper manner, affluent, satisfactory, and comfortable. Well can also mean a deep hole, that can bring water and therefore, life. The suffix is gender neutral. It can be either male or female or neither. Some of the examples of the suffix well are: Atwell, Baswell, Blackwell, Caldwell, Cromwell, Crowell, Honeywell, Hopewell, Howell, Maxwell, Newell, Powell, Rockwell, Stilwell, Stockwell, Whitwell and there are many others." Perhaps in a manner of understanding, they are all related. Here's the website -  Surname Prefixes and Suffixes.  So many interesting stories.  Let us continue on  our Canadian vs American view of things through the lens of jokes: An avid Canadian fisherman decides to cross the Peace Bridge and go over to Lewiston and fish the American side of the Niagara river. He settles down on a quiet dock and begins to fill his bucket with some nice fish when an American game warden approaches him. "Could I see your fishing licence please?".  When he hands him his licence,the game warden laughs and says that it is no good because it is a Canadian fishing licence. At this point the fisherman replies "but I'm only catching Canadian fish". The warden scratches his head for a moment and says "what do you mean?"  The fisherman reaches in his bucket and pulls out a fish and asks the warden "what kind of fish is that?". The warden looks and says its a small mouth bass, to which the fisherman replies, "See what I mean, if it was an American fish it would be a Large mouth bass." This sculpture is in Burlington on the harbour.  The last few years, the Latow Photography seminar has been online.  Previously it was at the Burlington Art Gallery, and lunch time was a walk along the waterfront where children were playing and kites were flying.

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Wherefrom that Surname of Lightfoot

I wondered what the origin of Gordon Lightfoot's surname is.  We watched the documentary about him last night. The surname is derived from Old English and means light foot and likely an occupation as a messenger. The Lightfoot migration to Canada can be traced to Henry Lightfoot landing in Nova Scotia in 1749.  A subsequent record indicates Richard Lightfoot came to St. John NB in 1784. A Lightfoot family was aboard the ship "billow" in 1833.  Gordon Lightfoot has a busy tour schedule that shows dates into October 2020.  He was born in November 1938, so over 80 years old now. That makes another folk-rock/country music musician/composer who is still active.  Here we are at Christmas with the Poinsettias about to arrive at the Fantasy of Trees display.  What a comparison with the American  experience where Thanksgiving has yet to arrive. I found a few abstracts from past years to remind us of the textures and shapes of their 'leaves/petals'.

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