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What are some of the most unusual last names you've come across in your life?
The oddest name I've ever heard of is Shockro, I had two high school teachers by that name. It's Irish. I also have an aunt whose maiden name is Porvaznik, not sure of the nationality.
A name in my family tree is Swiss/Jewish and it's Rebsamen. When they moved to the US, they changed it to Turnipseed of all things. The Rebsamen family in my family tree immigrated to South Carolina from Switzerland in the 1700s. Family lore is that they were Jewish originally but that they converted to Christianity sometime during the Reformation. Whether that conversion was voluntary or involuntary, no one knows.
I have a DNA cousins with unpronounceable (Polish) names and then one with the surname of Dumbell. I was at first thinking "Dumbbell" but it is actually an old name from England and predates athletic equipment or popular measures of mental acuity.
My own last name doesn't appear on any web site I've seen that purports to rank last names in the US. As near as I can figure, that means there are fewer than 2,400 people here with my last name, probably many less.
Two of the strangest last names I ever came across were many years ago while delivering flowers I had deliveries to next door neighbors named Goodnight and Gotobed. At the time I thought it had to be a joke but was told that those were in fact their names.
A name in my family tree is Swiss/Jewish and it's Rebsamen. When they moved to the US, they changed it to Turnipseed of all things. The Rebsamen family in my family tree immigrated to South Carolina from Switzerland in the 1700s. Family lore is that they were Jewish originally but that they converted to Christianity sometime during the Reformation. Whether that conversion was voluntary or involuntary, no one knows.
Actually the name isn't that far off from the term "turnip seed" in German--Rübsensamen
Right - I think that's why they changed it to Turnipseed. Which in my opinion is a big step down.
My maiden name is also German and I rarely hear it here, though it's a bit more common than Rebsamen. Still, no one knows how to pronounce it so I was glad to trade it in.
Now my last name is the name of an eastern European country, so people think that's my husband's ethnicity, but actually it's a bastardization of a Gaelic word - he's Irish. LOL
Two of the strangest last names I ever came across were many years ago while delivering flowers I had deliveries to next door neighbors named Goodnight and Gotobed. At the time I thought it had to be a joke but was told that those were in fact their names.
I have a whole line of cousins named Goodnight. (It's German. The original spelling was Goodnacht, I believe.)
One of my g-g-g-aunts in the 1840's married one of the brothers of Charles Goodnight, one of the most famous Goodnights in American history. (Charles was her brother-in-law.) Have you ever seen the movie or read the book "Lonesome Dove"? It is based on his life. Charlie Goodnight and his friend Oliver Loving started the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail in the 1860's. He also managed a 1.2 million acre cattle ranch in the Texas Panhandle.
Someone I know has a last name containing absolutely no vowels.
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