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Carpal Tunnel
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They're nice, if only I had time to dig into them. smile

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I used to have a unit on names when teaching 14-15 year olds.
They enjoyed it very much. Had lots of Name books, of course now
it is all on the 'net.


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Pooh-Bah
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Have you looked up your surname then Luke.....

Is it older than mine?

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I've searched everywhere for mine, cannot be found.


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Pooh-Bah
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Maybe the books just concentrated on 'mainstream' names.
I'm guessing American Indian surnames wasn't part of the research!

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I think I must have you confused. My surname is not
Native American. It's lost in the generational wars of
Eastern Europe.

I have a Native American Grandmother, but on my mother's side.

Last edited by LukeJavan8; 07/19/11 03:53 PM.

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Yes....I was mixed up, a bit. Thanks for making it clear, Luke.

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I'm guessing American Indian surnames wasn't part of the research!

I'm not even sure that Native Americans had surnames before they adopted English or Spanish ones. The Navaho do have surnames in their own language, but they seem to be the exception. (The Dutch and Yiddish-speaking Jews in the early 19th century were made to adopt surnames by Napoleon's bureaucrats.)


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Indians used names from the first thing the mother saw after the
birth, or some great happening (green comet in the sky: Tecumseh)
or some feat of the father, and they often changed their names
after Hanblecheya (vision quest). As above, aside from Navajo,
they did not use last names; the clan they belonged to was more
important.


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Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
I'm guessing American Indian surnames wasn't part of the research!

I'm not even sure that Native Americans had surnames before they adopted English or Spanish ones. The Navaho do have surnames in their own language, but they seem to be the exception.


I don't know about all of them but a couple of the more common names, Begay and Benally, just mean something along the lines of 'his uncle' or 'his nephew'. They got them when the white man decided they needed last names so they asked them who they were. They responded by giving their name and the relationship to someone else who was there with them. At least that's the story I got when I was living in Flagstaff back in the '70s.

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