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10/15/23 07:36 AM #433    

 

Bill Kelso

        

                            How Humans Developed Languages.

If surnames are part of language families, it might be helpful to ask how human beings have tried to talk to one another. As noted below, not all language families are constructed in the same way.  In fact, among all the language families that humans developed in the world, they created four different types of languages to communicate with one another: Those four types involve either 1) clicks, 2) tones, and 3) syllables, either multi syllabic or 4) mono syllabic in nature. As is obviously the case, European languages and American English relies on syllables rather than clicks of tones.

  1. Clicks.

         An interesting question is what were the earliest languages spoken by man?  While there is some       dispute over this issue, probably the very first languages spoken by men involved humans making clicks with their tongue against their teeth. Today in South Africa if you visit a village primarily made up of members of the San tribe also known as the Bushman who speak the Khoisan language you will find them using clicks to communicate with one another. If you ever read about a tribe like the !King cited with an exclamation mark in  front of the name of the tribe, it means you pronounce the first syllable of the name with a click. As is obviously the case, the exclamation mark in front of a tribe thus indicates that  that population speak with clicks. 

         The members of tribes speaking the Khoisan language, noted for its clicks, are probably examples of      some of the earliest living human beings. Being examples of the earliest human, they naturally developed what was probably the first form of human languages. However, in the roughly 150,000 to 200,000 years of modern human evolution, individuals in Asian and Europe developed three alternative type of languages to     communicate with one another. 

  1. Tones. 

For instance, in place of clicks, the Chinese devised tones as a second way of structuring language. Because early languages did not have many sounds, humans in mainland Asia compensated by using variation in tones to express those sounds. In some case they used tones in an absolute sense with high or low tones to distinguish one word from another. That situation is true of some other African tribes. The Chinese, however, developed directional rather than absolute tones to communicate with one another. That means they can take the same sound and vary the         direction of the pitch. In one case the pitch may be ascending which means one word while in another case the same sound will have a descending pitch which conveys a very different idea. Today the main Chinese language, which is mandarin Chinese, has 4 tones but Cantonese, the Chinese language often spoken in Hong Kong, has 7 tones.  In Asia, China and South East Asia are the countries that primarily rely on tonal languages to communicate.

  1.  Multi Syllabic Languages. True of Japan and many European Languages such as German

As an alternative to clicks and tones, people can multiply the number of sounds in a language by stringing together different syllables to express themselves.  For instance, Japanese, in contrast to Chinese as well as Vietnamese, has developed a multi-syllabic language. As is obviously the case, some European countries. like the Japanese, also developed many multi syllabic form of language to  facilitate speaking with one another,   

Generally, if a language has few sounds more of its words will be multi syllabic in nature. As an illustration, in Japan many surnames are long and multisyllabic such as Mitsubishi or Sumitomo and have   four syllabi. However, the most multi syllabic language in the world is  probably the indigenous Polynesian language of Hawaii. In Europe the language that is most notable for having multi syllabic words is easily the German language.

  1. More Mono Syllabic Languages. Primarily English.

In contrast to Japanese and German, many other European languages are more mono syllabic in nature. That is especially true of English which is probably the most mono syllabic language in the world. It is this way because of all the languages in the world, the English language has one of the largest arrays of sounds. Because England was invaded by so many different nationalities it acquired a rich array of sounds from the Celtics, the Romans, the Germans, the Scandinavians and their Vikings cousins to construct our English language. 

You can easily visualize the monosyllabic nature of English if you recall our 2nd grade reader. In our 2nd grade books which were called the Dick and Jane reader, they would have sentences that are incredibly monosyllabic in nature. For instance, a common or typical sentence would have Dick talk to their dog by saying something like “lie down Spot “. In many cases their words had only one or two syllabi or three at most. We also see this in how American given names are very monosyllabic such as Joe, Bill Bob or Ed as opposed to the more multi syllabic German given name such as Wolfgang or Friedrich or Hermann.

 


10/15/23 08:34 AM #434    

 

Bill Kelso

                                Irish Surnames 

I. Origins of Names I. When they Adopted surnames

Because the Irish were some of the first ethnic groups to have surnames they started adopting surnames as early as the 11th century.

II.  The Ten most popular Irish Surnames in America

  1. Byrne                  Raven
  2. Doyle                   Means Dark Stranger
  3. Kelly                   Warrior or Fighter
  4. McCarthy            Son of Loving Individual.       
  5. Murphy               Sea Warrior
  6. O’Brian               Grandson of a Noble Individual
  7. O’Connor            Grandson of a Lover of Hounds
  8. Ryan                   Related to Water
  9. Sullivan               Hawk Eye or Dark Eye          
  10. Walsh                  Foreigner or Stranger possible from Wales

III. The Different Ethnic Groups that created Irish Surnames

Irish names are complex as they represent four different groups.

1) The first group are the native Celtic people who constitute the bulk of the Irish Catholics in Irelands today. Most names are derived from this population and thus Celtic surnames are derived from the Gaelic language, the original language of the Irish, Scotch and Welsh people.

2) The second group consist of Scandinavian Viking names. Ireland was basically a rural nation without any cities for over a thousand years. However, when the Vikings started attacking and conquering Ireland in the 8th century, they created most of the Irish cities we know today including Dublin, and Cork. 

Equally significantly the Vikings also altered the physical appearance of the Irish people. Traditionally the Celtic people were originally from eastern Europe  before they migrated to western Europe and most of them had jet black hair. The actor Pierce Bronson is a typical Celtic Irishman. Many of our classmates with Irish surname likewise had or have jet black hair. However, when the Vikings from Norway and Denmark conquered Ireland and intermarried with the local population, many Irishmen acquired brown hair and even blond hair with blue eyes from their northern conquerors. And in a few cases, you even can find red hair Irishmen. The Scandinavians who made up the Vikings thus had an impact on both the surnames as well as the physical appearance of the Irish population.

3) The third group of people to make up the Irish are people we call the Scotch Irish. Because England was always worried that her Catholic enemies in Spain and France might one day strike an alliance with the Irish and thus attack England from the west, England was determined to conquer Ireland in the hopes of removing that threat.  One way they tried to achieve this was to move people from protestant Scotland into Northern Ireland. Their names are similar to local Irish names as both people are Celtics, but Scotch Irish surnames are still distinctive.

4) Finally, the fourth group to influence Ireland and influence her surnames are called Norman or the Anglo Irish. In the 11th century the Normans who were former Vikings who had conquered the west coast of France also invaded England. Ever since then the Normans have ruled England as their kings and queens. Many of these Normans eventually tried to conquer Ireland and, in the process, intermarried with the local Irish. As you can imagine they have their own distinct surnames. For instance, names like Fitzpatrick, or Burke or Dillion or Barrett are Norman Irish names.

Below are the surnames of all of the above groups. However at the end of the outlines, I list some common Norman Irish Names.

IV. Types of Irish Names

1)Patronymic

2) Occupational

3) Location

4) Physical and Moral Characteristics

5)Item Surnames

V. Irish Names and their Origins

1) Patronymic Surnames

1) O                              O as opposed to Mc means Grandson.

1.O’Neill                           Grandson of a warrior or champion

2) Mac and then Mc      Son of. This is a very common form that many Irish surnames take.

1. MacNamara              Son of the House of the Sea

2. McAlister                  Son of Alasdair

3. McBain                     Three possibilities. It may also be English and refer to a Scottish Irish term for the son                                                         breather of life which may mean he is the son of  a friendly person

4. MacBride                  Son of an Exalted one.

5. McCain                     Son of Cain

6. McCampbell             Campbell is a well known Scottish name  meaning crocked mouth but because there                                            Mc in front of Campbell he may be Irish or Scotch Irish

7. McCarrol                  Son of a warrior

8. McCarthy                  Son of a loving person.

9. McClure                   Since it has Mc it means son of and there are  two possibilities. One is son of the pale one and  the other option is son of the servant of the pilgrims.

10. McCrillis                 Son of someone living in the woods or forest.

11. McGiven                 Son of Given

12. McGraw                 Son of someone who is full of grace or  prosperous

13. McGovern               Son of Govern. 

14. McKenney               Son of a very popular personal Gallic name

15. McKinnis                  Son of Angus

16.  McMillan                Son of a bald person

17. McNamee                Son of hound of Meath                             

18. Fitz                         Son of: the Norman version of Mac. The Normans were French who invaded                                                England in 1066 and then Scotland and Ireland.

19. Fitzgerald                Son of Gerald

20. Fitzsimmons            Son of Simon

21. Ferguson                 Son of Fergus.  This is more of an English type surname

22. Gee                         It can also be English and French. In Gallic It isoften used as McGee which means son of Hugh.

23. Murray                   Also a Scottish name But the Irish version is  probably some derivation of O’Muireadhaigh

2 Occupational Surnames

1. Bell                           Refers to a person who was a Bell ringer. A 

                                    Very popular name in northern Ireland. Also a popular surname in England

2. Buckley                     Herdsman

3. Carroll                      Son of a warrior

4. Clarke                      a modern surname to mean clergy or priest. 

5. Clery or Cleireach     Churchman or clerks

6. Coleman                   Burner of Coal.  Also an English name

7. Cunningham             From Conn which mean a a chief or Leader.

8. Donnell                     King of the world.`

9. Foley                        A Plunder (one who steals good) or a pirate.

10. McGowan               Son of a Smith. Gowan is Irish for Smith

11. Higgins                   Viking

12. Hughes                    A variant of the name Hayes which means fire

13. O’Leary                  Calf Herder or grandson off a calf herder

14. Lynch                     Seafarer or Mariner

15. O’Leary                  A Keeper of Claves or Keys

16. McLoughlin-           A Viking or son of a Viking

17. Murray                   Also Scottish. Lord of the Irish or it may be topographical and refer to sea side of a firth in Scotland

18. O’Neil                     Neil means Champion or Warrior.

19. Regan                     Means the child of the king or little King.

20. Ryan                       A King

21. Steward                  One who supervises the winery

22. Quinn                     A Chief

3) Location  or Topographical Surnames. (This type of name was rare among the Irish)

1. Burke                       Refers to a castle or fortress.

2. Ford                         An Irish name that maybe came from England  to refer to a shallow section of a river. May also come from an Irish name meaning son of the devotee of the saints.

3. Curry                       A Hill Hallow. It is a hill with a low valley next to it. Also the name of a small village in western Ireland

4. Desmond                   From south Munster

5. Graham                    Also maybe Scottish. Refers to a town in a   gravel areas or grey homestead. 

6. Johnston                   Refers to John’s town

7. Ryan                         Besides being a reference to a king some think it refers to water or the ocean

4. Attributes or Characteristic Surnames. Describes a personal trait or an activity one engages in.

In all of the follow names you can add an O to get O’ Carrol or O’ Connor or O’ Dryer which means grandson. Also some names will have an Mc in front of the surname to mean son of.

1. Barrett                      Means bearlike or a warrior. May also be English

2. Boyle                        Involves making a pledge. Actor in the TV series everyone loves Raymond.

3. Brady                       Spirited or perhaps thieving or roguish.The first meaning of Brady best portrays the                                              TV show The Brady Bunch.

4. O’Brien                    Grandson of a high and noble person.

5. Campbell                  Crooked mouth

6. Carroll                      Valorous in battle. Also sharp or pointed

7. Carey                       Means Dark of Black. 

8. Casey                        Vigilant in war, watchful.

9. Cassidy                     Means curly haired. Was a famous singer 

10. Caven                     Born Handsome                     

11. Connor                   Lover of hounds. Include Carrel O’Conner In the Heat of the Night and Donald O’Connor  who was in the movie Singing in the Rain.

12. Daly                        Assemblies Frequently. Powerful Mayor of Chicago

13. Daugherty               Dangerous or obstructive.

14. Delaney                   A mixture of two words meaning defiance.

15. MacDermott            Free from jealousy

16. Dillon.                     Like a Lion. Also means from Leon in France.

17. Doherty                   Grandson of an unlucky or hurtful person

18. Donald                    A powerful Ruler

19. Doyle                      Dark Stranger

20. Duffy                      Dark or black. Famous American actor

21. Dunn                      Means Dark or Brown

22. Farrell                    A man of valor

23. Flanagan                 Means Scarlet or Red

24. Flynn                      Another variant of /Flanagan

25. Gillespie.                 Son of the bishops’ servant

26.Gorman                   Little Blue One

27.Graw or McGraw     Son of a person of grace or prosperity

28. Hayes                      Fire

29. O’Keefe                  Grandson of a gentle person

30. Kelly                       Several possible meanings. 

                                             Fighter

                                             Warrior     

                                             Bright Headed     

31. Kennedy                 Helmet Headed or misshapen head

32. Lennon                   Lover         

33. Moore                     Majestic

34. Moran                     Great

35. Mulrennan              All names with Mul which means bald usually applied to the monks. Related to                                                      McMillan.

36. Murdock                 Warrior

37. Murphy                  Means Warrior of the Sea. Most poplar name in Ireland

38. Neil                         Champion. Tip O’ Neil was a famous politician. 

39. Nolan                      Famous person

40. O’Shea                    Grandson of a stately person.

41. Sullivan                   Dark Eye

41. Quinn                     Wisdom or chief

42. Regan                     Impulsive

43. Reilly                      Valiant

44. Scully                      A scholar’s descendant

45. O’Shea                    The Esteemed or Majestic One

46. Sullivan                   Little Dark Eyed or hawk eyed

47. Sweeney                  Pleasant

48. Wynne                     Fair or White

5)Item Surnames

a.A animal (Often the Symbol of a Clan) or a Plant

1. Byrne                       A Raven

2.Connor                      Wolf or hound do in Irish

3. Cullen                       a holy plant

4. O’Mahony                Grandson of a Bear Calf.

5. MacNamara              Son of a Hound of the Sea.

b.A Former King or Saint

1. Kavanagh                 Name of an Irish Saint

VI. Norman Irish Names

Cody, Barron, Barrett, Barry, Black, Bonds, Bourke, Britton, Brown, Burke, Bryan, Chambers Claire, Cody, Cooney, Crosbie, Cullen. Cusack Dalton, Darcy, Dillon, Fagan, Field, Fitzgerald, Fitzsimmons, Fleming, Francis, Gibbons, Griffin, Marshall, Martin Morris Morrissey, Nagel, Plunkett, Powers, Prior, Rice, Roach, Russell, Stapleton, Stephens, Talbot, Tyrell, Wade, Walsh, White, Wolfe.

The surnames for tomorrow will be English Surnames

 

 


10/16/23 06:13 AM #435    

 

Bill Kelso

                                       English Surnames

1)Most common English Surnames in the US

  1. Anderson
  2. Brown
  3. Davis
  4. Jackson
  5. Smith
  6. Johnson
  7. Jones
  8. Miller 
  9. Moore 
  10.  Taylor
  11. Thomas
  12. Thompson
  13. Williams
  14. Wilson

The Meaning of English Surnames. 

1.Patronymic Surname 

They Either use (a) Son, or abbreviate it to (b) On or they (c) add the letter S to the surname.

a. Son

In England they have two ways of designating that you are the son of. 

The English as well as the Swedes often use the suffix son as in the English name Wilson or the Swedish name of Olson, Examples:

Allison                 Son of Alexander

Davidson             Son of David

Dyson                  Son of Dy who makes vacuum cleaners.

Dison                   Basketball Coach at CK

Peirson.               Son of Piers. Famous CK classmate

Thompson           Son of Thomas. If there is no p then Thomson is usually low land Scottish.

Wilson                 Son of Wil

b. Sometimes they will abbreviate the son and just use the abbreviated on instead of son as in Dixon.

c. Finally they may add an S to the Surname to denote son of. Examples

Andrews     As in the famous Andrews Singers of the 1950s and 60s

Collins        Son of Collins

Davis          Son of Davi. University of California at Davis

Harris        Son of Harris

Wilkens      Son of Wilke

2. Occupational Surnames

a.Religious Occupations

Bishop                 High ruling Church official.

Dean                   May be derived from a title of a high-ranking Monk who oversaw other monks.                                                                

b. Government or Leadership Surnames

King                    This person worked for the monarchy or acted like a King.

Clerk                   Keeps the records of the government.

c. Generalized Servants

Gill or Hine          All these names mean a general low level  servant. 

d. High Ranking Servants. Since the Normans who came from France invaded and conquered England many of the management jobs come form old French such as Chamberlain,  Butler and Marshall. These positions maintained the feudal manor during the Middle Ages.

Butler                  The Head Servant

Clerk                   Record the transaction of an estate. The third most  popular occupation 

Chamberlain       A person who was often in charge of paying the bills for an aristocratic family. r.

Reeves.                He collects the rent. His name leads to the term sheriff. 

Stewards             The oversaw the household or the estate. They  ranked above the Chamberlain. 

Counter               A Treasurer controlling the counting of  Money

e. Military Occupational Surnames

Archer                         Shoots Bows

Boyer                            Makes bows. 

Bowman                      Makes Bows

Armstrong                    Best fighter

Arrowsmith                  Makes Arrows

Fletcher                        Made iron tipped arrows.

Stringer                        Strings the Bows.

f.  Security Occupations

Yates                   Yates were in charge of gates

Porter                   Also means doorkeeper or gatekeeper

Gates                   Manned the gate to an Estate

Ward                    Gate Keeper

g. Servants who looked after the animals of an aristocrat.

Foreman             They watch the swine. Example: George Foreman 

Haywards            They prevent cattle from breaking into the enclosure of their lord.

Marshall              Looked after the horses. Later became top Military officials.                       

Pinder                 Hunts down stray cattle

h. Occupations Watching the Forest and River

Woods are a scarce resource. Landlords wanted to prevent poachers on their hunting groups.              

Forster                Forster is the most important job protecting the aristocrats land holdings.         

Woodward.          Keep bandits like Robin out of the forest. 

 Parker                A position of privilege in protecting theforest of the landowner.

Rivers.                 Looked after Rivers

Bridges                They look after the bridges.

i. Occupation of Musicians     

Piper                   Bag pipe players

Fiddler                Played the Fiddle

Harper                Harp Players. Valerie Harper appeared in Mary Tyler Moore.

Singer                 Singers.      

j. Typical Laboring Jobs often on your house

Barber                Cut Hair

Chandler             Make Candles.

Coleman              Charcoal Burners or brought coal to the house.

Collier                 Also a Coal Miner or Charcoal Burner

Crocker               Another name for a pottery maker. The most famous Crocker is Davy Crocker        

Lander                 Laundry

Potters                They made Pottery in kilts.

Ropers                 They made Ropes.

Saddlers              Make the Saddles

Smith                  Blacksmiths. Make shoes for horses.

k. Household Building Occupations. Many of these names come from old French rather than English. Thus we say masons instead of stonemen.

Mason                 Build a building. Name of a comedian Jackie 

Glass, Glazer       Put the glass in a building. 

Slater, Tyler        They put tiles on your roofers.

Thatcher             Thatcher of Roofers. A Prime Minster of England                  

l. Farmer             These two names refer to Farmers and related occupations

Fielders               Someone who worked in the fields

Georges               Also German. Means tiller of the soil

m. Foods Preparation Occupations

Bakers                 Baked Bread

Brewer                Made Beer

Butcher               Cut up Meat.

Cook,                   A Chief

Fisher                  They Fish.  

Kitchener            Someone in charge of the Kitchen 

Skinners              They flay the meat to make it tender.

Spencer               In charge of the Wine who dispenses it.

n. Clothes Oriented Jobs

Skinner               Could be a person who skinned the animals.

Tanners                What is tanning, It is  the process of transforming skins and hides into                                  the leather for jackets or other forms of clothes.

 Wool Based Clothing Jobs

First somebody had to make sure the wool was of sufficient quality before a Taylor or Weber tried to sew a new garment. The three names of Wool Tramplers were people who trampled the raw cloth to scour and thicken it.  Why are there three names for this occupation? It all depends on location. Fullers worked in the south and east of England, the Tuckers worked in the West and the Walkers worked in the north of England. 

Dyers                  They Dye Cloth.

Fuller                  Wool Tramplers, Makes the wool thicker  

Hoods.                 They Make Hoods

Mill                     At the center of every town was a mill that    became the center for villages of weavers 

Shearer               The cut the cloth for Weaver to assemble.

Taylor                 A Person who Sew Clothes into a finished product. He would take over from a weaver.

Tucker                Also a Wool Trampler.  

Walker                Also a Wool Trampler which makes the wool thicker. 

Webber, Webb.    The variation of Webbers all weave wool into clothes. 

Glover                 Make Gloves.  Actor named Danny Glover

o. Occupations involving Wood or Crates or Carts

We go from Sawyer, Hacker, and Carpenter to Turner and Wright. The first group secured the wood while the Hoopers, Collier and Carpenters made the finished produce.

Barkers               They strip and prepare bark from a tree.

Carpenter            Carpenters. A famous singing brother act act.

Collier                 Provides the charcoal burner supplies for the  Smiths and Turners. 

Coper.                 A Barrel Maker

Hooper                Made hoops or staves for Barrels

Miller.                 A miller or lived near a mill. A miller grinds grain for eventually eating

Sawyer                Wood Cutter.               

Turner.               Worked a Lathe. Make products out of wood              

Wheeler              Makes Wheels. Mr. Wheeler taught English at CK      

Wright                A joiner who joins wood together

p. Shipping Occupations

Carter                          Take the finished goods made by the above occupations to market. 

Packers                        They packed up the goods to be  shipped. 

3. Topographical or Habitation Surnames

The Wealthy who often moved often adopted surnames that indicates where they came from. Also the Normans when they conquered England often adopted surnames describing where n France they originally lived.

Norman                                 Means northern people. 

Suttons                                  People from southern towns

Topographical Locations. 

Sometimes they overlap with occupation names in that mill may mean you work in a mail or live near a mill.  At the same time forest and bridge may mean you oversee the forest and waterway or you live next to the forest and waterway. 

When using their surroundings to create surnames the English people picked common places like hills, creeks, hills ridges, fords and bridges. People were very practical and thus did not mention glorious valleys or sacred trees. But these topographical areas also reflect the national economy. Many of these names reflect the fact that most people were farmers before they picked their surnames. 

a.People often chose names derived from streams.

Beech                           a Stream as well as a beech tree

Bourne, Blackbourn,     All these names refer a location next to a local stream.

Brook and Brock,         You lived near a stream

Ford, Hanford            These two names refer to fords or shallow  areas in a stream. 

b. Names denoting Hills

Ridge                           Top of a hill

c.Woods. Or Forests 

Greenwood                   New Woods or Forest

Harwood                      The Hares’ Wood

Hurst                           A Wooded Hill

Holt                             Holt. Living near the woods

Manley                         A Clearing in the Woods.

Oakley                         Near Oak Trees

Rodda                          A Forest Clearing

Shaw                            A person lives near the woods.

Individual Trees

Ashby                           Ash Tree. Bill Ashby was our classmate

Ashcroft, Asher            All names refer to the Ash tree                 

Birch, Alder                 Birch Tree           

Tash                             Another version of living near Ash Trees.

d. Clearing Land or valleys

Barnett                         A word for burning and clearing land

Beer                             A clearing of a grove of trees  

Bradley                        Living in a valley.

Buckley                        Living in a deer meadow.

e. Names from Valleys rough areas and Vegetation

Rowe                            Living in a rough areas. Name of a pundit, Karl Rowe

Bates                            A pasture. 

Barton                           A large farms

Blackmore                     Refer to a dark swamp

Moss                              A Moss Bog. 

f. All names ending in ton record a farm or village or hamlet

The number of these names tells us that that the English were once farmers and lived in small villages. 

Sutton                              All refer to Hamlets

Or Whittington

4.Characteristics Theories of Surnames

As is obviously the case they physical attribute that lead to surnames can vary. Below are some of the attributes reflected in surnames today, They can range from your physical characteristic to your personal or moral outlook.

a.Physical Traits

1.The Color of your hair or complexion

For Blondes the nicknames are Gold, Bright, Blanchard.

For Brunettes there are Black, Brown and Moors.

Black                                              Dark Complexion                                            

For Redheads common Surnames are Reed, Russell, Rudge.

Reed                                               Red HairI

2,The Shape of your face.

Beck                                              Person with a Beak or Big Nose

B.Moral or Personal or Intellectual Traits

Goodfellow, Goodman,                    These surnames reflect your moral character.

Meek                                                You are a quiet unassuming person.

Pews or Pughs                                 Holy or Pious Person

Gulliver                                             Indicates you are greedy

Penny                                                Could mean you are careless with  money

Bogg and Braggs                              They brag a lot.

Gordon                                              Foolish                                                                                                

Dodd                                                  Lumpish or Stupid. Also can mean  deceiver

Wisely                                                The following names suggest smart 

Keens                                                On the ball

Lowman or Lemon                              A Lover

Friends or Long Term Relationships

Bellamy                                          Long Term Friend

Newman                                         New Person

 

 


10/16/23 06:25 AM #436    

 

Bill Kelso

                          African American Surnames

         The Influence of the English & Irish on African Surnames

I. The Growing Diversity of African American Surnames

The surnames of African Americans have become more diverse over the past fifty years. When we were in junior hi and high school, just about all African Americans were born in America. However, in 1965 the US revised its immigration policy which allowed more people born overseas to settle in the US.  As a result the black population today consists of three distinct ethnic groups.

First, today, in contrast to the early 1960s, 89% of all African Americans were born in the US, while secondly 10% of African Americana today were raised in Caribbean countries, and thirdly 1% grew up in one of the 50 countries of sub Sahara Africa. 

In two states on the east coast, New York and Florida, a majority of the black population are from Caribbean countries rather than locally born. They even tend to live in separate neighborhoods. In the state of New York Harlem is the cultural capitol of American born blacks while Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn is the preferred settlement of individuals from the Caribbean. In Florida, the diverse ethnic groups from the Caribbean are even more spread out as individuals from Jamaica prefer to live in Broward Country and Ft. Lauderdale while Haitians have chosen to live in an area called little Haiti in Dade Country while Spanish speaking Caribbeans have settled in the communities around the city of Miami.

In light of the growing diversity within the black community, there is a comparable growth in the nature of surnames among African Americans. 

II. American Born African Americans

If we look at the surnames of American born African Americans we find that their surnames are primarily English with a scattering of Scottish names. 

a.English Surnames

To illustrate the pervasive nature of English surnames listed below are the most common surname of American born African Americans as well as the surnames of many prominent African American Athletes. They include:

Most Common Surnames         Surnames of Prominent Athletes

Brown                                            Jim Brown

Harris                                            Elgin Baylor

Hill                                                Lebron James

Jackson                                          Willie Mays

Johnson                                          Walter Peyton

Jones                                              Willis Reed          

Lewis                                             Oscar Robertson

Moore                                            Dennis Rodman

Smith                                             Gayle Sayers

Thomas                                          Emmitt Smith

Walker

Washington

White

Williams                                         

b.The interesting question is why don’t African Americans have African surnames.

The answer is two fold. In Africa at the beginning of the slave trade, it was not common for individuals to have a surname. Even  today in Tanzania old tribal cultures like the Masai still do not give themselves surnames.

But secondly even if an individual did have a surname, the slave owner who had just purchased his new slave just erased his African name and gave him a new name, often his surname which in most cases was English. At the same time to indicate 1) his sense of ownership, the plantation owner would add an s to the last name to show possession such as the above names of Williams, Davis or Thomas. If he did not impose his own surname on those he had acquired, he 2) often gave his new slaves an occupational surname like Taylor tor Fuller to indicate their future jobs on the plantation.

c. Irish Surnames 

In addition to English surnames, a surprising number of well known African American celbrities have Irish surnames. Below is a brief list of well known actors, singers and sport stars with Gallic last names.

Mariah Carey

Stephen Curry

Dizzy Gillespie

Isaac Hayes

Willie McCovey

Eddie Murphy 

But unlike the case of black Americans with English surnames where their slave master dictated their last name, African American with Irish surnames were a result of romantic relationships between the two groups often involving marriage.

The relationship between the Irish and African America reflects the common problems both ethnic groups faced in early 20th century America. 

d. The Problems of Nativism and Jim Crow

From roughly 1840 until the 1930s immigrant groups and Africans confronted the twin problems of nativism as well as segregation. As each ethnic group dealt with its own challenged, blacks in the segregated south and the Irish in large urban communities eventually found themselves living side by side in urban ghettos, which in some cases lead to intimate relationships.

The growing relationship between Black and Irish American is an interesting piece of social history. While the story is long and complex, it is worth at least a brief retelling because it tells us a lot about how American has changed over the last 100 years. 

(1)Nativism and the Irish

When the Irish first arrived in America they precipitated a very hostile reaction from Nativist movements including the Know Nothings in the 19th century and later by the Ku Klux Kan in the 20th century.

The hostility by the Know Nothings was so great they started launching violent attacks on the earliest Irish ghetto in Five Points in south Manhattan just north of the financial district. At that time the main defender of the Irish was the Catholic Church who was led by a charismatic bishop known as Dagger John because he wore a large cross around his neck. 

To stop the attacks on the Irish neighborhoods, he visited the Mayor of New York and in effect threatened to burn down New York if the city did not intervene and stop the violence. To drive home his point, and intimidate the mayor, he transformed the St. Patrick day parade into a march of young Irish men walking past city hall, threatening action if the city did not stop the public attacks. John Scorsese’s movie “The Gangs of New York” partly describes this difficult period in American history.

The threats of Dagger John worked and New York finally created a professional Police Department in 1846 which lead to a significant decline in attacks on Irish neighborhoods. 

But if outside violence started to decline against the Irish, many in society still looked down on them. In terms of social order in society, the Irish were clearly at the bottom of pecking order. Ironically one way that disdain for the Irish manifested itself was that American society did not consider the Irish to be totally white people. 

Today there is a lot of talk about the idea of the white race. But you have to realize that concept is primarily a post World War II idea.  Over the last 120 years the idea of race has gone through three different interpretations. In the 19th century race was interpreted to mean what today we would call ethnicity and it had nothing to do with your skin color. For instance last century people talked about the Irish race, the Italian race or the English race. There was no white race but instead of collection of different ethnic races.

In the 20th century race finally assumes its second identity and is finally associated with skin color, but in contrast to today race was not always considered an absolute trait as people perceived degrees or gradients of race. 

In contrast to America, the Latin Americans were the first to distinguish various degrees of race as they had four names for your skin color. For example in Brazil they distinguish Pardo which is mixed race or multiracial from Preto which is black. In the US in contrast, if a person has any African racial characteristic, however minor, they were classified as black. Ironically enough, while Americans tend to view the black race in absolute terms, they initially viewed the white race as a variable color. 

When most Americans looked at the Irish they considered them only partially white. Depending on the situation the Irish were often called the Black Irish or often White Mulattoes, a Latin American term meaning you were only particularly black. But in the case of the Irish Mulatto it meant they were only partly white. Later when the Italians migrated to America they were also considered only partially white and like the Irish occupied the bottom rung of the social hierarchy. For much of late 19th and early 20th century, this view of the Irish and later the Italians persisted until finally these two ethnic groups became so politically powerful in cities like New York or Chicago that the rest of American society finally accepted them. As the Irish and later Italian were finally able to move up the social ladder, we finally evolved our third notion of race in America. which also views race as a matter of skin color. But the key difference today is most individuals see the differences between whites and blacks in absolute terms and rejects the idea of race as a variable trait.

(2)Jim Crow and African Americans

While the Irish were struggling to overcome the attacks by Nativist groups, African American were trying to deal with the creation of a segregated society in the south.  After the civil war, the south did not take its defeat in the civil war as the last word on race relations. If slavery were outlawed, they would create in its place a system of segregation which means that there would be parallel societies in the south with separate stores, restaurants, schools and even drinking fountains for white and black citizens.

This system was called Jim Crow. The interesting question is why is segregation called by this name? Historically during slavery the south had developed a form of entertainment called minstrel shows which tried to show that slaves were happy with slavery. In those shows Jim Crow was a prominent character who seemed happy with the authoritarian lifestyle of southern plantations. 

The character was called Jim Crow because symbolically Crows are black birds and Jim was often the name for a black crowbar.  When the south substituted segregation for slavery, they tried to portray the  average black person as content with his situation in life.

In reality, the recently freed slaves highly resented the new restriction on their freedom. While roughly 95% of all blacks lived in the south during slavery, beginning in 1905, blacks began a mass movement out of thew south and headed north towards cities like New York and Chicago.

When they arrived in the north blacks were incredibly poor and uneducated and faced discrimination just like the Irish. Given their lack of resources the question was where could they live? The cheapest and most readily opportunities were in those very poor areas where the Irish had settled in the decades before hand. One of the most notable new homes for blacks from the south was just north of Hell’s kitchen where the Irish had recently moved to in the early 20th century.

In light of the fact that the Irish and black were both at the bottom of the social scale and were considered to be of the same race, it is easy to understand how they often established personal relations.

But you have to realize in the early 20th century, interracial dating let alone marriage was highly controversial. Even in the 1960s when we were in high school, less than 1% of marriages were interracial marriages and polls indicate that 80% of American disapproved of such relationships. Today, to show how much the US has changed over the past 100 years, one in ten marriages is interracial in nature. Recent polls show that 80% approve or have no difficulties with such racially mixed marriage. Even more interesting if you watch much TV these days you will notice that around 20% of all commercials have mixed racial couples in their ads.

III. Caribbean Born African American Surnames

If English and Irish names are common among American born Blacks, today Caribbean Blacks have added to the diversity of African life in America. 

As you all know the British, French and Spanish colonized this area. As a result Caribbeans from British dominated Islands like Jamaica have English surname, while Caribbeans from French areas like Haiti have French sounding surname. The best example of this phenomenon is President’s Bidens press secretary whose surname is Jean-Pierre. 

Finally Caribbeans Blacks from Spanish areas have Spanish names.

To illustrate this final point, we can look at the names of recent successful black baseball players. When we were students in high school baseball was the national pastime and African American were some of the most dominant players in the game. For example, in the 1960s Willie Mays, and Willie McCovey were two of the most successful baseball players, one with an English surname and the other and Irish surname. 

But in the 60 years since we graduated from high school American born blacks have come to favor playing football and basketball rather than baseball. Today 73% of all pro basketball players and 56% of all pro football players are American born blacks.  The most dominant players today in pro basketball are Lebron James (an English surname) and Stephen Curry (an Irish surname). In contrast the percentage of American born blacks along with their English and Irish surnames who once dominated baseball has declined significantly. In their places has been the rise of Caribbean Hispanic Blacks who today have become  some of the best baseball players in the country. Below is a partial list of some of the most celebrated Caribbean baseball players along with their Spanish surnames.

Orland Cepeda                      Puerto Rico

Rod Carew                            Panama

Robert Clements                    Puerto Rico

Juan Marichal                       Dominican Republic

Mini Minoso                          Cuba          

David Ortiz                           Dominican Republic

IV. African Immigrant Surnames

Finally the last type of Black surname are found among the 1% of the African American population who are recent immigrants from Africa. If you have been following the news about affirmative action in America  over the past year, you have probably been seeing a lot of African surnames as 40% to 50% of African American students enrolled in Ivy League universities are recent immigrants from Africa. 

Unlike most American surname many African surnames are multi syllabic. For instance two countries sending the most immigrants are Nigeria and Ethiopia.

Nigerian Surnames

Adebayi

Bulgogun

Aboubakan

Ethiopian Surnames

Abebe

Kebade

Yohanner

Summary

While American born African Americans are likely to have either English, Scottish or Irish Surnames, Caribbean born Africans are like to have either British, French or Spanish surname while African immigrants have unique indigenous surname which are generally multi syllabic in nature


10/16/23 10:21 AM #437    

 

Steven Lindfeldt (MidTerm)

Bill, thanks for all your hard work and information. An interesting read. Now, here's your next challenge. Tell me about the name Lindfeldt. Here's one clue for you. My grandfather was the only Lindfeldt in his family. Everyone  else was named Lind. I appreciate the memory of the great Giants mentioned, Mays McCovey. Cepeda, Marichal. Always finishing second with the greatest team on earth.

 

 


10/16/23 01:21 PM #438    

 

Bill Kelso

Hey Steve

Nice to hear from you.  I looked up your surname and it appears to be either English or Scandinavian. The reason it can be both is that the Vikings invaded England numerous times and left their impact on the country.

Your surname Lind is probably topographic as it seems to refer to Linden trees which are also called lime trees. People who choose topographical themes for their last names probably had found memories of these trees in their initial homes. Linden trees are very popular in Northern Europe and many cities in in that region line their main streets with this type of tree.

If your grandfather expanded your last name to Lindfeldt, the feldt or some variation of that term is commonly used for a field or meadow. Thus Lindfeldt would be a field next to a bunch of linden trees or a meadow full of linden trees.

In some ways your last name is similar to Bill Ashby’s s last name, which refer to Ash trees. While the plant of name of the tree may vary, many people wanted a last name that remined them of some scenic part of their past. 

Hope that information is useful. Also thanks for reminding me that many of those surnames of famous baseball players originally played for the San Francisco Giants. In fact, I remember when Willie McCovey was an up and combing baseball player, he played against the Sacramento Solons and hit 3 home runs in one Doubleheader. Ah, great memories from the past.

 

 

 


10/17/23 04:51 AM #439    

 

Bill Kelso

                                             Jewish Surnames

I.Some of the Most Common Jewish Surnames in America

Lewis

Kaplan

Goldberg

Katz

Goldstein

Cohen

Schapiro

Epstein

Rosenberg

Friedman

Weinstein

Schneider

Feldman

Kagan

Kohn

Gordon

Bernstein

Schwartz

Finkelstein

II. The Origins of Naming. Where did they get their surnames.

For centuries Jewish individuals, as well as most people in the West and in the Bible, had only single names, even though a given name might be followed by a word indicating you were the son of a certain individual. Where and when Jewish individuals began to actually adopt surnames depended on their particular historical circumstance. 

As we shall see the Jewish community eventually split into three separate communities, all of which adopted differing naming procedures. 

For instance in the Middle Ages many Jewish individuals migrated from the Middle East and established new homes western Europe. However, given the religious intensity of the crusades, the countries of Spain and England eventually ended up expelling all of their Jewish residents in the 13thcentury. In their search for a new homeland most Jewish individuals migrated from western Europe to either northern Europe, or southern Europe. 

Those whose went to northern Europe were called Ashkenazi Jews and primarily ended up in Poland. However, when Poland was conquered by Russia and Germany, the Ashkenazi population was split in two with Jewish residents living either in German lands, or the Slavic territories of Poland and Russia. 

In contrast those Jewish individuals who went south from Spain created what were called Sephardic communities while those who remained in the Middle East were called Mizrahi communities.

III. The Origins of Names. How Surnames vary by Location

When Jewish individuals acquired surnames varied depending on whether they were in Ashkenazi, Sephardic or Mizrahi communities.

For instance, Arabic speaking Jews in the Middle East and Sephardic Jews from Spain acquired surnames fairly early on in the Middle Ages such as the 10th and 11th centuries.

However, the Ashkenazi did not get their surnames until the end of the 18th and the start of the 19thcentury. It was only when the emperor of Austria and Napoleon decreed that Jews must adopt definitive family names that German Jews got surnames. Likewise in Russia the Czar took a similar line and ordered all Russian Jews to adopt a last name. 

IV. Origins of Names Their Derivation.

A. Unique Jewish Names

1)Biblical Names

Because of their unique history many Jewish people have chosen biblical names for their last name. In some cases, there may be an ancestral link between an ancient Jewish institution or tribe, and a modern day Jewish family which is expressed in their family surname.

Names have always played an important role in Jewish history. For example, if something dramatically happens to an individual in Jewish biblical history, he or she gets a new name. Below are the two most famous examples of this process.

1 From Abram to Abraham

The first example of the bible conferring a new name is the example of Abram and Abraham, the father of Judaism.  Abraham’s original name was Abram but God changed his name once he accepted a new special relationship between his people and God.

2. From Jacob to Israel

The second most famous example of a new name is when Jacob’s name becomes Israel. But who is Jacob? Jacob and his twin brother Esau were the grandchildren of Abraham and the sons of Isaac the founders of the new religion of Judaism. 

One day Jacob after leaving home is attacked by someone whom he ends up wresting with, an individual that appears to be God.

 In ancient Israel during the Bronze Age a common name for God was the word El. After the above wrestling match, Jacob, like his grandfather, gets a new name which is the word Israel, which literally means one who has wrestled with God. If you look at the letters in the name, the relationship becomes readily apparent. The first letters of the surname Israel or “Israe” mean you are wrestling with someone while the last two letters of the name indicate the name of your opponent. In this case that refers to El which as mentioned above is common Middle Eastern name for God.

But you might ask why was Jacob wrestling with God in the first place? It turns out that Jacob had many ethical issues and was more than willing to deceive others to get his way. The most notable example is that Jacob deceives his father and gets his blessing as the first born son, a high honor in the ancient middle east. In the process he cheats his brother Esau of a birthright that is really his.  God is perhaps wrestling with Jacob because Jacob is not living up to the norms of his religion.

The Popularity of the Name El for God in the Middle East

Besides the Jewish community using El as the name for God, the Arabs also used El in their description for God. But the Arabs insisted on putting the definite article “the” in front of the world God which in Arabic is “ai” which results in God’s name becoming Allah. 

3. Israel

While the popularity of the God named El was evident in the ancient past, why is it still in common use today. For instance, why did the Jewish community, after World War II, decide to name their country after Jacob’s new identity of Israel. The answer is simple. It turns out that Jacob will have 12 sons who will go on to populate the land of Israel as twelve separate tribes. In this sense he is literally the father of the Jewish people.

But even more significantly the name Israel is also a metaphor for the dilemma facing every religious Jewish person. One the one hand the Jewish people believe that God is a powerful and just God who is looking after the well-being of the Jewish people. On the other hand, in real life the Jewish people are constantly being attacked and enslaved by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and eventually by the Romans. In trying to reconcile the promise of God and the reality of their actual lives, the Jewish people have to wrestle with God, hence the name Israel.

After WWII, the newly created Jewish nation faced the same dilemma confronting their relatives in the ancient Middle East as they had to reconcile their belief in a just god with the German holocaust. As was the situation in the past, the Jewish people had to wrestled with the conflict between their beliefs and the brutality and violence that characterized the modern world. Their newly name country off Israel symbolized that dilemma,

Names that Reflect Religious Tribes or Positions in ancient Israel.  

5. Levy 

This is another important biblical name as it indicates that your family is descendent from the tribe of Levi, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Why is the tribe of Levi given such prominence?  The answer is that Levi is the tribe of Moses and his brother Aaron and the members of the Levi tribe were instrumental in establishing and running the Jewish temple. Among other activities, this tribe guarded the temple and produced the priests or Cohens to run the temple.

Variation of the above name include Levi. Lewi, Levin. Levine. The maker of Levi jeans belonged to this priestly tribe of Israel.

6. Cohen.

This name meant you were a descendent from Aaron, the brother of Moses and the high Priest who presided over the Jewish Temple. Today individuals with this name often enjoy distinctions today such as giving the priestly blessing over the torah during religious services.  

Variation of Cohen today are Kohn, Kahn, Kahane, Kagan, Kogan. Since there is no h sound in Russia it has been replaced with a g in the above variants of Cohen such as Kogan or Kagan, the latter name being that of a current member of the Supreme Court.

7. Seagal

Assistant to the High Priest

2)The German Impact on Jewish Ashkenazi Names. I

While some Jewish individuals have chosen biblical names, the vast majority of Jewish people have German names and a smaller percentage Slavic name. That raises the interesting question as to why so many Jewish Individuals have east European names.  As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, the answer unfortunately is tied up with the religious conflict that marked the Middle Ages. 

To briefly recap that discussion, we need to remember that in light of the religious intensity that often accompanied the effort of the Crusades to drive the Muslims out of the Holy Land in the 12thto the 13th century, many western nations became hostile to all non-Christians in Europe. As a result, countries like England and Spain often forced their local Jewish population to leave their homes and seek asylum elsewhere.

In search for a new home the many Jewish individual from western Europe ended up living in Poland whose Kings welcomed them because he thought they would enhance the Polish economy. However, when Germany and Russia later attacked Poland and divided their country between them in the 18th and 19th century, many Jewish people found themselves living in either German controlled or Russian dominated territories.  While historically before Hitler, the Jewish population fared better in Germany than in the Slavic areas of Russia, many Jews preferred to adopt German names even when living in Slavic territories like Russia.  

In light of these historical conditions, there are certain German suffixes or endings of surnames that commonly are found among Jewish people. These German endings usually refers to a thing like a stone or a topographical item such as a village or mountain. Below are 7 of the most common German suffixes adopted by people of Jewish ancestry. 

1.Names ending in berg.                 Berg means hill or mountain or cliff: Example. Weinberg                                                    

2. Names ending in burg                  Names means living near a castle

3. Names ending in baum                 Refers to someone who lives near a notable tree                                                   

4.Names ending in blum                    Means Flower: Example Rosenblum

5.Names ending in feld                     The ending mean field.   Example Seinfeld.                         

6. Names ending in stein.                 Stein means stone. Examples, Goldstein or Einstein

Stein is a German world that can be pronounced as either steen or stein. In German it would be pronounced as stein but in English there is a rule if you have two vowels next to one another, the first does the talking. Thus stein is often pronounced as steen but it can vary from one family to the next, For instance Senator Diane Feinstein relies on the German pronunciation rather than the American whereas Mike Goldstein uses the American pronunciation. 

7.Names ending in thal                      Thal refers to a valley. Example Blumenthal

3) The German Impact on Ashkenazi Surname II

The Key Role Mann plays in many German and German Jewish Names

Besides the above well known suffixes, many German names and German Jewish names end in the word man or mann. But in contrast to the suffixes that we just described above which primarily describe topographical features such as a mountain or valley, the suffix mann identifies either the occupation of a person or his personal traits. 

This tendency of the German language to attach the word man to an occupation is also common in the English language as we talk about a mailman or a congressman or an admirable man. The main difference between the English and German language is that in English we do not use such designations as surnames while the Germans often employ mann or man as part of a person’s surname.

Examples are:                                  What the Surname means

1. Ackermann                                  Ploughman

2. Hoffman                                      Steward

3. Kauffman                                    Merchant

4. Zimmerman                                 Carpenter

5. Edelman                                      Admirable Man

6. Newman                                      New Man

4) The Slavic Influence on Ashkenazi surnames.

While many Jewish names are German in nature, the Slavic language has also influenced the naming practices of Jewish individuals, especially in Eastern Europe in general and Russia or Poland in particular.

The later Russian or Slavic influence  on Jewish names is reflected in surnames ending in vich or witz, or ski or sky. These two very different endings of surnames refer to locations within Eastern Europe. The vich or witz endings refers to the Slavic area of Pomeranian or today’s Gdansk in Poland, The sky and sky endings may also refer to a particular location a persona originally came from.  Thus Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is from the areas around Zelen.

1.Wich                                            Examples. Berkowicz 

2.Witz                                             Examples Abramowitz or Rabinowitz

3. Ski or Sky. If it is ski it is Polish     Examples. Zelensky. Or Wildavski

BThe Five Traditional Source of most Jewish Surnames

If we now leave aside the impact of the Bible as well the influence of the German and Slavic Languages on Jewish surnames, most Jewish names reflect the five Factors that have traditionally determined the meaning of most surnames.

1) Jewish Names that mean son of or Patronymic Surnames

1. Ben                                             Ben Gurion the father of modern day Israel

2. Berkowicz                                   Son of Berk

 

2) Occupational Names

1. Ackerman                                    Ploughman

2. Blecher                                        One who worked with tin.

3. Brandwein                                   A distiller of brandy spirits

4. Herzog                                        Means duke or the servant of a duke

5. Hoffman                                      Means a steward or farm laborer

6. Goldstein                                     Perhaps in the gold design business

7. Kaster                                          Manager of a granary

8. Koeniig                                       Means King

9. Kramer                                        A shopkeeper or tradesman 

10. Kreigsman                                  Warrior

11. Mann                                         Generally means person. 

12. Nagel                                         Nail Maker

13. Oberman                                    Means chief and often indicates a rabbi 

14. Portnoy                                      A tailor. Name of a famous novel.

15. Rabinowitz                                 A name meaning son of a Rabbi

16. Rabin                                         Indicating descendants of a rabbi

17. Sack.                                        One who made or sold Sacks.

18. Sandler                                      One who repairs shoes.

19. Sanger                                       Singer

20. Schechter                                   One who slaughtered cattle and sold meat

21. Scherer                                      One who shaved others.            

22. Schmidt                                     Blacksmith

23. Schneider                                   Tailor

24. Schubert                                     A shoemaker or cobbler

25. Schultz                                      A dues collector or a rabbi

26. Schuster                                     Also a shoemaker.

27. Weidman                                   Hunter or wood farmer    

28. Zuckerman                                 A name for one who sells sugar.

 

3) Locational Surnames

a.Actual Location of a city or region

Many took the names of places or cities such as Halle or Bamberger  

1. Bamberger                                   From Bamberger

2. Dreyfus                                       From the German city of Triet

3. Epstein                                        A city in Hesse that has many stones

4. Frank                                          From Franconia.

5. Halper or Heilbroner                     From the city of Heilbronn in Germany.

6. Heller                                          From Halle a town in Germany.  

7. Spanier                                        One who came from Spain.

8. Shapiro                                        One from Spyer 

9. Pollack                                        One who came from Poland. 

 

b. Habitat: Distinctive place in nature like a valley with flowers

1.Barton                                          An enclosed field                             

2. Berg                                            Hill or Mountain or Cliff

3. Berger                                         One coming from a hilly place.

4. Bloomberg                                   Flower and Mountains

5. Bloomfield                                   Flower field

6. Blumenthal                                  Flowers in a valley

7. Borg or Burg                                German for being near a fortified castle.

8. Buch                                           German for living near a Beech tree

9. Einstein                                       It means to enclose or surround with stones

10. Feinberg                                    It means a beutifull hill

11. Feldman                                     Someone who lived on land cleared of trees

12. Jablonski                                    Polish for a place with an apple tree

13. Keller                                        Aa cellar or underground room

14.Klein                                          You live on a wedge shaped piece of land.

15. Leitner                                       One who lives on the side of a mountain.

16.Morgenthau                                 A geographical place such as morning                                                                valley.

17. Sachs                                         A memory of persecuted forebearers.

18.Seinfeld                                      His field or Sea Field

19. Steiger                                       Dutch for settler on or near the pier.

20. Stein                                          Mean stone, or rock or glass.

 

4)  Characteristics or Attributional Surnames

1. Adelman                                      Honorable Man

2. Altman                                        Old man

3. Edelman                                      Like Adelman it means honorable. 

4. Friedman                                     A man of peace. 

5.Greif                                            A person who grasps or snatches.

6. Grossman                                    The big one. Similar to Grant in English

7. Kuhn                                           Brave

8. Kurtz                                           Short

9. Lange                                          The long one.

10. Lieber                                        Lover

11. Liberman                                   Beloved man

12. Meier                                         The scholar man

13. Meyer                                        Means light in Hebrew.

14. Novack                                      Slavic surname meaning newcomer

15. Schoenman                              Beautiful

16. Schwartz                                   Black appearance

17. Shapiro                                      Pretty or Lovely

18. Switzer                                      Pleasant

19. Romer                                       Refers to a a pilgrim 

20. Weiss                                        White appearance

5) Item Surnames

In the past when illiteracy in Europe was still the rule rather than the exception, a house had, instead of a street number, an identifying sign painted and cut in the shape that took a variety of shapes such as a red shield or a fox or a rose tree on its front.  Many Jews simply and somewhat whimsically took as surnames these signs on the house where they lived.  

a.Beautiful things. When the German government forced Jewish people to have surnames, many of them commonly used combinations of of words to describe some attractive or beautiful items such as Goldstein for gold stones or an ideal and beautiful location such as Goldberg which means gold mountain. While the British were very prosaic and often chose common place items for surnames such as trees or wooded areas (Holt), or a clearing in a forest (Rodda), many Jewish individuals argued that if they had to have a surname, it should be a name of some idyllic place or beautiful object.  As a result, Jewish surname that focus on items are often called Ornamental Surnames or surname that reflect some attractive item or location.

1.Bernstein                             Burnt stone

2. Bloom                                Flower

3. Bloomingdale                     Flower dale in which dale mean valley

4. Garfinkle                             Red Stone.  Surname of Art Garfinkle 

5. Goldman                             Probably from a line of goldsmiths. 

6. Goldstein                            Gold stone

7.Goldwater                            Gold with water.

8. Green                                 Refers to the color Green 

9. Newman or Neuberger      The German word for New

10. Rubin                                Behold a Son

11. Rose                                 Roses

12. Rosenberg                        Mountain of Roses. 

13. Rosenblatt                         Rose Paper or Leaf

14. Rothman                           Red Man

15 Rubenstein.                        Ruby Stone

16. Silverstein                         Ornamental name silver stone

17. Stein                                 Glass or stone.  

18. Morgenstern                     From German meaning morning star.

b. Names on Houses

As mentioned earlier, in Austria and German addresses of houses often had signs rather than numbers. When the German government ordered people to take surnames, many Jewish people adopted the sign on their house as their surname. 

1. Rothschild                          Red shield. 

2. Rosenstock                         Rose Tree

3. Strauss                              Ostrich or bouquet or knight crest.

 

 


10/17/23 05:05 AM #440    

 

Bill Kelso

                  German Surnames

  1. Most Common German American Surnames

         Becker                                   Occupation Baker

         Fischer                                  Occupation Fisherman

         Hoffman                                Occupation. Steward

         Kruger                                  Occupation. Innkeeper

         Meyer                                   Self Employed Farmer

         Mulller                                  Occupation. Miller

         Newmann                              New

         Schmidt                                 Occupation Smith

         Schneider                              Occupation Tailor

         Schutz                                   Occupation. Mayor

         Wagner                                 Occupation. Wainwright

         Weber                                   Occupation Weaver

B.Types of Surnames

1)Patronymical Surnames. Very Rare in German Surnames

2)Occupational Surnames

3) Locational Surnames

4)Characteristics or Attributional Surnames

5)Item Surnames

C.How German Surnames are Unique

The Germans are unusual in creating surnames as they rarely create surnames that are patronymic in nature. The only exception is north west German which is close to the Scandinavian lands who overwhelming rely on family ties to name people such as Olson or Anderson or Peterson

More than any other language German surnames are based on occupation followed by geographical surnames, and surnames based on personal characteristics.

Similarly many German names in America have been Americanized to make it easier for people to pronounce it or to make it easier to be assimilated.

D.German surnames

1)German Patronymic Surnames

Rarely used

Thommen                Swiss German Surname that may mean son of:                                     

2) German Occupational Surnames

1.Ackerman              Farmer

2.Bauer                     Peasant or farmer

3. Becker                   Baker

4. Decker                  Roofer

5. Eggers                  Plow Man

6. Eisenhower            Iron Hewer. Hewer means he cuts iron

6. Fischer                  Fisherman

7. Gerber                  Tanner

8. Goldschmidt          Goldsmith   

9. Hoffman                A  Steward or Famer who worked his farm or Hoff

10. Holtzmann           Woodsman

11. Meyer                 A Manorial landlord or self-employed farmer

12. Muller                 Miller

13. Schmidt               Smith

14. Schneider            Tailor

15.. Schultz               Medieval Sheriff or Constable

16. Schutz                 Watchman or Warden

17.Shoemaker            An Anglicized version of Schumacher which means cobbler or shoe.

18. Trump                 German word for Drum or Drum maker. 

19. Wagner               Wainwright (Makes and Repairs Wagons)

20. Weber                 Weaver

21.Ziegler                 Brick or Tilemaker

22. Zimmerman         Carpenter

3) German Sports Figures

1. Lou Gehrig            Topographical Surname

2. Babe Ruth             Characteristic Surname meaning Red

3. Casey Stengel        Topographical Surname

4. Honus Wagner       Occupation name. Made Wagon                  

4)German Territorial or Topographical Surnames

1. Bayer                    Bavarian.

2. Brandt                   Land clear by fire

3. Crites                    Living near the town of Kreitz

4. Kissinger               Someone from Kissing in Bavaria

5.Kohler                   Charcoal

6. Shoenberger.          Shoen means beautiful and berger means hill or mountain

7. Winkel                  Corner

5)German Surnames based on Personal Characteristics

1. Ehrlichman            Honest Man

2. Engel                    Short version of the name Engelbart. Th

3. Gingrich                Powerful            

4.. Hartman               Strong Man

5. Klein                    Little or short

6. Nehrbass               Several possibilities. Perhaps a Gourmand,  May also be topographical                             surname meaning you live near a village.

4. Schwartz               Black

7. Hertz                    A King Hearted Person.

6)German Surnames based on particular Items such as seasons or     

animals.

a. Seasons        .

1.Winter                   as in Bob Winter            

b.German Names Based on Animals

  1. Adler                   Eagle
  2.  Fink                    Finch
  3. Hirsch                  Buck Deer
  4. Vogel                   Bird
  5. Wolf                    The Animal Wolf

c.Name based on plants

  1. Baum                   Tree
  2. Eichmann             Oak Man
  3.  Kohl                   Cabbage
  4. Nussbaum            Nut Tree
  5. Pfeffer                 Pepper
  6. Strauss                 Bouquet

d. Ornamental Names

      1.Blau                     Blue   

      2.Rothschild            Red Shield

      3.Roth                    Red

 

 


10/17/23 09:01 AM #441    

 

Steven Lindfeldt (MidTerm)

Bill, thanks for your response. The name is Swedish. We will never know for sure why the feldt was added . If he did it on purpose, he sure made it  harder on us as no one can pronounce  it and we always have to spell it. The only explaination I ever had is that it had something to do with the fact that he was in the Royal Swedish Army and the feldt had something to do with that.

 


10/17/23 04:16 PM #442    

 

Bill Kelso

                     A Profile of McClatchy & Sacramento

After looking at the surnames of many of our classmates it is interesting to ask about the profile of our graduating class. And if we are curious, we can also ask what the graduates of the McClatchy class will be like in 2063. As mentioned in an earlier post, it will probably be a very different picture from the one our classmates took in 1963. 

However, if we look at our McClatchy class in the year in which we graduated, we can ask to what extent our classmates reflected the country at large in the mid 1960s. In some ways we do mirror the US in the sense that at least some people from all the ethnic and racial groups in America are to be found among our classmates. 

Among Hispanics, Asians and Jewish individuals their percentage of our McClatchy class probably reflected their makeup of the American population as a whole. 

But at the same time many ethnic groups were either underrepresented or overrepresented in our class. It is easy to understand why this occurred. After all, in place of settling in all parts of the US, many ethnic and racial groups have preferred to live in distinct regions of the country. In the process of deciding where to live, many ethnic groups created an ethnic type of city and high school that was very different from what we experience at McClatchy. Before discussing this point, it is interesting to see what ethnic groups disproportionately shaped the makeup of our high school class.

Overrepresented Groups

1. English

Not surprisingly, people with English surname dominated the surnames found among our graduates. While the English constitute a large ethnic group in America, they are not the biggest ethnic group in the country. In fact they barely are larger than the population of Irish Catholics. But among our graduates, individuals with English surnames maybe constituted a half of all of our classmates.

2. Scandinavians

Another group that was surprisingly numerous among our classmates was the number of individuals with Scandinavian names. Historically most Norwegians,Swedes and Danes have preferred to live in the Midwest. In particular Norwegians have tended to dominate Wisconsin, while Swedes overwhelming settled in Minnesota while Danes elected to live in North and South Dakota as well as Iowa. However, the Swedes who were the most likely to live in cities rather than take up farming in rural area, also had a large presence in northern Chicago, a city, aside from Stockholm, that quickly acquired the second largest Swedish population in the world.  .

Because the immigrants from the above three countries lived so close together, American started referring to them as Scandinavians. 

3. Irish Catholics

A third  group that is overrepresented in our class is the number of people who are or Irish descent. Historically the Irish overwhelmingly settled in the north eastern section of the country in states and cities like Boston in Massachusetts, New York City, and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. However there were also small but significant settlements in large cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But generally there were only a handful or Irish in in small or medium sized cities like Sacramento.

4. Scotch Irish

Finally a fourth group of former students who are surprisingly numerous in our school are people with Scotch Irish surnames. Historically unlike their Catholic relatives, the Scotch Irish dominated the Appalachian regions of Kentucky and Tennessee rather than regions like Boston and New York City. However, their cultural capital was Nashville which lies at the base of the Appalachian Mountains, an area where they developed their unique country music as a way of expressing their frustration with living in the poverty-stricken areas of the south east. 

Given the poverty of their surroundings, many Scotch Irish migrated into the Ohio valley seeking out industrial jobs in the Midwest. Even later when the depression and the dust bowl hit this region of the country, the Scotch Irish were part of the Okies that John Steinbeck described in his book The Grapes of Wrath”. Many of them settled in the San Joaquin Valley picking vegetables to financiallly survive. Today they are very prevalent in Bakersfield.

You can always tell if there is a large Scotch Irish population in a region by asking if country music is popular in the area. That is certain the case with Bakersfield where Merle Haggard help develop the Bakersfield sound, which is a rougher version of the country music popular in Nashville. 

But while the Scotch Irish are notable for settling in the San Joaquin valley, it was rare to find them further north in a city like Sacramento. 

Underrepresented Groups.

1. German Americans

If we had an unusual number of people with Enlglish, Scandinavian, Irish or Scotch Irish surnames, we had very few German Americans. At first glance this absence is surprising as Germany American are the largest ethnic group in America with over 50 million members. But once again the preference of Germans, like other ethnic groups, to live in particular regions of the country explains their scarcity in our high school class.

To appreciate where most German Americans live you can draw a V connecting Cincinnati in the west, South Louis in the south and Milwaukee in the north west and you would have the location of the German population that created the beer industry in America. But the Germans were highly concentrated in the Midwest with Milwaukee considered the cultural center of German life in America.  Generally in the Midwest Scandinavians were in more northern states like Minnesota while the Germans were just south of them in lower Wisconsin and Ohio.

2. Italian Americas

Another surprising group under represented in our class are people with Italian surnames. Historically most Italians settled in the east in states like New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Rhode Island and eastern Pennsylvania. However, while there are few Italians in the Midwest many settled in California especially cities like San Francisco. The Italian areas in the city included the neighborhoods around Fisherman’s Wharf as well as North Beach area. Some of the most notable Italians from San Francisco include Joe DiMaggio, Nancy Pelosi as well as Joe Alito the mayor of San Francisco in the 1960s.

However, in Sacramento and McClatchy we just have a handful of classmates with Italian surnames..

3.African Americans

A third group that is unrepresented in our class involves African Americans. Their underrepresentation reflects the fact that until about 1910, roughly 90% of all African Americans lived in the south. However, in 1910 African Americans began a major move out the south which reduced their percentage in the region to just over 50%. In their outmigration they moved north in two different streams. Once stream located in South Carolina and Georgia moved north towards New York and New Jersey. The other stream from Mississippi and Tennessee moved to the Midwest and primarily settled in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. 

As a result the percentage of African Americans on the west coast was relatively small. While roughly 10% of all Americans were black in the 1960s, the population of African Americans in California was much smaller at around 7% or 8%.

However in a major reversal of past practices in the 1980s African American have started to move back to the south. They are primarily moving out of states like New York, New Jersey and Illinois and moving to states like Texas, Georgia and Florida. Adding to the outmigration of African American from the above northern states, African Americans have also started to move out of California over the last two decades. Today while almost 14% of the country is black, the African American population in California is around 5% and dropping. It appears that both the poorest of African Americans as well as some of the best educated and affluent blacks have decided to move south.

As a result roughly 60% of all African Americans today live in the South. If recent migration patterns hold up, in the next two decades close to 2/3 of all blacks may eventually settle in the area of the old confederacy. Evidently many African America feel there are better opportunities for upward mobility in the south than the west or east coast. 

                                       A Demographic Map of America

To better illustrate the locational decision of different ethnic groups we can look below at the ethnic and racial makeup of the four major regions of the country. As the list indicates there are significant ethnic difference from one part of the country to the next. For instance an ethnic profile of the country looks like the following:

The East

Large English, Irish, Jewish and Italian populations. Their African American population is large but has been declining over the past 40 years.

The Midwest

Large Scandinavian, German, Polish, and Scotch Irish populations. Also small but significant population of Irish. Catholics in cities like Chicago. Similarly the Midwest has a large African American population that since 1970s has been steadily declining.

The South

Large English, Scotch Irish populations but it also has a large and rapidly growing Hispanic and Black population.

The West.

Large English, Italian, and Jewish populations. Also it has a small but significant Irish population in the larger cities. Similarly it has a rapidly expanding Hispanic and Asian population as well a small and declining African American population.

                                      The Growth of 3 Types of Cities.

While the decisions of different ethnic group to live in various parts of the country is interesting in and of itself, their actions have actually helped create three different types of cities.

1.Ethnic Enclave Cities

First as we saw earlier many cities have developed as enclave cities in which they create distinct ethnic neighborhoods with different cultural traditions. The best examples would be cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and to a lesser extent San Francisco which have large Irish, Italian, Jewish and Black Neighborhoods. 

2.Dominant Ethnic Cities 

In contrast to the above cities in which we find multiple ethnic neighborhoods, our second type of city has one ethnic group that dominates the community. Because of their ties to their ancestral home, most people in the city are very aware that their ethnic identity has shaped their municipality. As examples of this type of city we can look at the German domination of Milwaukee, the Scotch Irish influence in Nashville, the Norwegian’s impact on the Racine or Kenosha in Wisconsin or the Swedish presence in Minneapolis.

3. Melting Pot Cities

Finally, our third type of city is a municipality like Sacramento where the idea of the Melting pot has shaped the culture of the city and its high schools. In these cases, there are no distinct neighborhoods like the Jewish community of Crown Heights, the Italian neighborhood of Bensonhurst and Canarsie, the African American district of Bedford Stuyvesant or the Russian neighborhood of Brighton Beach that exist today in the borough of Brooklyn. In our significantly more homogeneous neighborhoods few people will be aware of their ethnic heritage or even be able to identify other classmates who have a similar historical background.

While we were student at McClatchy we probably thought our high school experience was similar to that of every other high school kid in America. But because Sacramento was ethnically very different from ethnic enclave cities like New York as well as dominant ethnic communities like Milwaukee, we lived a more sheltered life, often unaware of our own ethnic heritage. 


10/20/23 09:39 AM #443    

Allison Oakes (Sabraw)

Great Data -thank you for the data and all of your time !!

allison


10/20/23 03:11 PM #444    

Susie Weidman (Arnold)

Bill, as always I enjoyed the information you sent to all of us, Thank  you for  your time and knowledge.  Your students sure were lucky to have you as their professor,


10/22/23 04:26 PM #445    

 

Francis Patrick Hassey (MidTerm)

Thank you Bill,

All of your posts are enlightening and much appreciated. My birth name before I was adopted at age 13 was Francis Patrick Cudahy. I have done some research on ancestry to find a lot of inforation on my birth Father and his family.

On another note, How do I get to your eariler posts about what it was like when we grew up. I want to share that information with my Son Peter Hassey.


10/23/23 04:40 AM #446    

 

Bill Kelso

Dear Francis

 

It was nice to hear from you. 

 

I think you are doing all the right things by conducting independent research by either contacting family members or having an organization like Ancestor.com analyze DNA information. Because of the melting pot, our surnames give only a partial view of our ethnic background. The fact that your birth name is Cudahy only proves that my grandfather was right that I attended school with lot of other Irish kids.

 

I will also try to find the information you asked for. About a week ago I tried to send you that information to your private e mail address but I just checked my list of sent e mails and that e mail failed to arrive. I am sorry for the miscommunication. But I will try to do better this time. To avoid another mishap this time I will send the information on your private McClatchy address.

 

Unfortunately, I must be getting older and somewhat forgetful as I am not quite sure what article to send you. But give me some time and I will try to figure it out. 

 

In the meantime, take care. I will get back to you soon.

 

Bill

 

 

 


10/24/23 11:11 AM #447    

 

Francis Patrick Hassey (MidTerm)

Bill,

Thank you for trying to send your earlier posts regarding what it was like for us to grow up in the fifties, sixties and seventies. I am not sure how to find a private McClatchy post. If you want to try my email again it is: 

fphassey@gmail.com and my phone number is: 1 (916) 712-5498 If you call and I do not answer, please leave a voice maill message.

Thanks again for your excellant posts

Patrick


10/29/23 09:28 PM #448    

 

Charlotte Adelman (Paliani)

 

David, thanks for posting the great pictures from the reunion. I am sorry I couldn't attend.Look forward to the next one! Everyone looked happy, healthy and having a great time. I must admit I had to focus on some name tags, not because people looked so different but because my memory for names is going, going, going. haha.

 


12/04/23 09:42 AM #449    

 

Bill Kelso

 

                  How our Generation Shaped America

As we wind up our final years it is interesting to analyze how the world has changed since we graduated from McClatchy. However, for many people such developments seem unimportant, as they seem external to us and appear to affect our lives only indirectly. 

To hopefully stimulate more interest in our changing world and to make the subject more appealing, it might be helpful to change the focus of these posts. While previously we have tried to see how a changing world affected our lives, it might be more interesting to reverse the process and examine how our lives as teenagers and young adults affected the world and transformed our country.

Naturally the above statement probably seems terribly overblow. After all when we were young high school kids, we had no conception that our actions in the 60s were anything special. In most cases, the demands of daily living, of finding a job or going to college, preoccupied most of us. 

                                                             (1)

                               The Rise of the Teenager in America

                             From the Jazz Age to our Rock and Roll Age

Despite our lack of recognition, I want to focus on two key events to show the role our generation played in shaping American life. First of all I want to analyze how in the immediate post WWII period, the US developed its second but also most significant teenage youth culture.  In the 1920s there had been an earlier and much more modest growth in the size of the teenager population which today is known as the Jazz Age but it pales in comparison to the growth in the 1960s of our generation which is now known as the Rock and Roll Age.

However, the young people of the Jazz Age, which is also known as the Roaring 20s, certainly made a distinctive mark on American life. 

After all the Jazz Age which was noticeable for the behavior of its young people who fought in the trenches of WWI, became famous for their embrace of Jazz, as well as their adoption of a new form of morality which celebrated wild parties and making money.  

Many commentators want to compare the roaring 20s to the 1960s whose young people fought in the jungles of Viet Nam, embraced Rock and Roll and adopted at the end of the decade a new youthful nonconformist culture which also celebrated wild and drug infused parties. However, despite the superficial similarities, I want to argue that the two major youth cultures were very different. 

While novelists like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway felt that the Jazz Age was a failure and that the young men who fought in the war were a lost generation, I want to show at the end of this post that the expansive teenage population of the 1960s had a much more lasting and benign impact on American life.

To appreciate this development, I want to first discuss how the size of the potential teenage population dramatically increased in the early 20th century. And then secondly, I want to show how this new subsection of the American population developed its own unique culture, which in many cases conflicted with the outlook of their parents. 

After delineating how the makeup of the American population was evolving, I secondly, hope to show how the growth of the Rock and Roll Age significantly transformed America. 

Even though as teenagers in the 1960s we were undoubtedly unaware how our collective behavior impacted our country, our actions have had three significant and far reaching effects on the nature of American life today. For example, the growth of a youth culture not only helped 1) transform the musical tastes and the nature of entertainment in the US but 2) but in the process it also created a more tolerant and inclusive popular culture in which African Americas came to play a prominent role and 3) equally importantly the growth of the Rock and Roll generation played a major role in helping to transformed the American economy from primarily a service, finance and manufacturing economy into an economy that also has a major entertainment sector. Today as senior citizens we are enjoying the benefits and consequences of decisions we unconsciously pursued as young teenagers.

The Age of Adolescence

What caused the development of a teenager youth culture were developments that took several decades to play out. But the biggest factor that led to the rise of both the Jazz Age in the 1920s and the Rock and Roll Age in the 1960s was the growth of industrialization at the turn of the century. As the US became an industrial powerhouse, business had a need for a much better educated labor force. Increasingly before they hired anyone, they insisted on a high school or college education.

The result was a dramatic increase in the number of people graduating from high school. From a low of 8% of teenagers graduating from high school in 1905, the figures increase to close to 60%by the 1960s.  The number going to college also increased but at a much slower rate. Whereas the number of students graduating from college role during the Jazz age increased from 1% to around 4%,  by the time we graduated in 1963 a little over 7% of the American pubic had obtained college degrees.

High School Graduates        

                              1905          1920          1960          1990          2020

                                8%             18%           59%           80%           89%

As the number of students started to rise, psychologists in the early 20th century even invented a new name, called adolescence, to describe this new generation in American life. In the pre industrial age, when most kids lived on the farm, they often began helping their parents by working at a young age and were considered young adults.  Given the need for more education, the world of children now expanded to meet the needs of this new more demanding industrial age. There now appeared to be three stages of early life, rather than two, childhood, adolescence and then adulthood. 

While increasingly everyone agree that we needed to recognize this new stage in growing up, the word adolescence, which seemed overly academic or even pedantic, was soon replaced by the more popular term teenager after WWII.

Despite the growth in the size of teenagers in high school and college, it took a while for this new school age population to acquire a separate identity and to think of themselves as teenagers who shared a common outlook on life.

How Teenage Identity Replaced Ethnic Culture

The first hurdle was the problem of ethnicity. Beginning in the 1950s and extending through the early 1970s there was a new dynamic in American life.  Life in cities like Sacramento was significantly different from enclave cities like New York as the Melting Pot in more homogeneous cities started to work its magic in blurring ethnic divisions. 

At the same time that various ethnic group started marrying each other, erasing ethnic differences, the growth of large number of increasing affluent and sometimes bored teenagers began to magnify age differences. As young people ceased to think of themselves as Irish or Italians or Germans, they tended to identify as teenagers instead who values and desire for independence often clashed with the wishes of their parents. 

As similarities between teenagers became more pronounced, they often found themselves at odds with their older parents, creating in the process a new generation gap. As we shall see later whether it was buying 45s at Tower records or the growth of saddle shoes and bobby socks or women adopting a flip hair style, young people were beginning to forge a new teenager culture that often startled their adult counterparts.

How Teenager Identity Overcame Class Biases

Beside overcoming ethnic differences among teenagers, young people starting college also faced unpleasant class differences. In the early 1920s the few people who attended college were generally from well to do families. At that time most universities were private universities that catered to the very well to do. 

When private schools thus started to admit a few students from ethnic neighborhoods like Hells Kitchen or the Lower East Side, there was a lot of social conflict.  Since many students from recently arrived ethnic groups often lacked the polished manners of the upper class, they were often treated in a patronizing or snobbish manner. To correct this problem many elite schools created gentlemen agreements to limit the number of lower income students. The fact that the agreements were called gentlemen agreements reflected the fact that ivy league schools did not think of the lower income students starting to attend their campuses had the manners of proper gentlemen. 

In a more positive vein, private school also started creating student unions on college campus in the hopes of creating new venue in which students from different economic background could interact.  Traditionally the students from wealthy families occupied fraternities and sororities and looked down on lower income classmates who could not afford to live in frat houses. By creating new student unions, private and later public junior college and universities tried to create new institutions in which students from a variety of economic background could interact with one.  The hope was that by creating these new facilities, universities would undermine the degree of class snobbery that existed in many college campuses.

However, it was state and city governments that were the primary actors in trying to to break down the class biases of college. To make sure colleges were open to students of all economic classes, states and cities began a concerted effort to start building city colleges after WWII. To compliment the creation of city colleges most states tried to ensure that every major city had a relatively inexpensive state college. By and large their efforts were highly successful. By the time we graduated from high school, students from all walks of life could afford a college education.  As college became less expensive, the class divisions that had divided college and high school students also declined.

With ethnic and class differences shrinking, a new youth culture began to develop. Prior to the industrial age, young people often lived isolated lives in which their parents and perhaps their local church and community shaped their attitudes. By the middle of the 20th century, that bond between parents and teenagers began to fray.

The Rise of Advertising and National Magazines

With the rise of an industrialized economy, businesses and mass advertisers started to influence how young people saw themselves. While Americans had once lived isolated lives separated by great distances, large American companies started to standardize how Americans viewed the world. That process was certainly true of teenagers. As national companies began to produce magazines aimed at teenagers with names like Seventeen, large business enterprises sought to advise young women on how they should dress and comport themselves, diminishing in the process the influence of parents.

The Rise of the all Encompassing High School

But even more importantly, as young people were spending more and more time in school, school activities and peer pressure came to rival parents in shaping the attitude of young people. Increasingly high schools had a dramatic impact on students as they provided a place for constant peer interaction without any parental supervision. With the combination of mass advertising and the all-encompassing high school, young students gained more control over the shape of their lives. In classrooms and extracurricular activities teenagers had an unprecedent opportunity to develop friendship and peer culture with only a minimal amount of adult control. 

As the demand for a better educated labor force intensified, schools went to great lengths to attract and retain students by enhancing their social life. They believed they could attract more students if they gave teenagers the chance to be part of a larger entity in which they could individually excel.  Schools quickly realized that if they solely appealed to student to stay in school because of the benefits of education, they would fail in their mission. However, if they developed extensive athletic teams or created musical or social programs, students would come to school for the extracurricular activities. 

For examples, while many male students might be indifferent about studying or even graduating high school, their desire to shine on the gridiron in the weekly football game would give them plenty of incentives to pass all of their classes. For students who did not actually play sports, the high school ritual of attending the weekly high school football game and then cruising K street after the game made high school life attractive. If the local team won, students often felt a sense of pride in the achievements of their high school. High school was a place where teenagers could feel that they were not alone, that they belonged to a larger and respected entity that enhanced their individual status.

As the above examples indicate, school became the center of many teenagers’ life. Whether it was playing sports, singing in the choir, participating in the marching band, being a cheer leader, or just hanging out with your classmates high school shaped people’s lives. Instead of living at home and then attending school, many young people lived at school, and then attending home merely to eat dinner and rest. Increasingly school activities and friendships rather than family life gave many young people an identity as well as a sense of belonging. 

By the time we graduated, a new youth culture had emerged that often embraced values our parents were not wholly comfortable with. Tomorrow we will try to analyze the distinctive youth culuture that developed in the 1960s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


12/05/23 12:48 PM #450    

 

Bill Kelso

 

                                      (2)

          The Development of a New Youth Culture

                          The Rock and Roll Age

As the size and shape of a new student based population emerged in the 1960s, teenagers often adopted a distinctive set of attitudes that many of their parents often found disconcerting. Among other cultural changes, in the 1960s there were new norms shaping 1) our view of life, 2) how we should dress, 3) the nature of dating and 4) and what was most appropriate ways to entertain ourselves.

                                      From Self Restraint to Self-Expression

For example, before the rise of large companies and the age of mass advertising most people lived on either farms or ran small businesses. In this simpler economy many individuals felt their financial situation was often precarious. To financially survive, American culture stressed the need for people to exercise self-discipline, to show restrain, to save and reinvent in their local businesses or farm if they wanted to survive. 

However, with the rise of large impersonal businesses and the growth of a more affluent economy all of that changed.  With the growth of the American economy in the 20th century, individuals ceased being solo entrepreneurs and instead found themselves as employees of large corporations whose allegiance to the company was often superficial. They also were increasing better off and no longer felt the need to save and be frugal.

In this new environment a dramatic shift occurred in values as increasingly young Americans, who no longer felt the need to embrace an austere existence of self-discipline, elected instead to enjoy themselves. In place of living a restrained and boring life like their parents, they often wanted to express themselves and find some excitement in their interaction with other young people. 

While this shift in values undoubtedly represented a better balance between work and life, there was always the danger that the search for self expression and personal satisfaction would eventually lead people to become self indulgence or even self destructive. While that later situation may have developed in the late sixties with the rise of LSD and the drug culture for some teenagers, in the early 50s and 60s the teenager culture for most young people seemed more liberating and exciting than self destructive.

                                    What Should a Teenager Look Like?

                                           The Style of Young Women

To express their new search for individuality. teenagers and their new youth culture also placed a lot of attention on their personal appearance. But that emphasis on their appearance should not surprise us. After all, the very first youth culture in America which is called the Jazz Age led to the development of the flapper, the first distinctive style of the young.

The Flapper Age

Prior to the 1920s the ideal of feminine beauty was labeled a Gibson Girl, who was a woman who had an hour glass figure with a narrow wait and a big bust. Because the young people of the Jazz Age wanted to carve out a separate identity for themselves, young girls rejected this traditional view of an ideal women and adopted in its place bob (short) haircuts, and vertical dresses that deemphasized their figure. In place of female curves, they favored a flat chested and even masculine appearance.

To retain some degree of femininity, young flappers also raised their hemlines and began to show their ankles, a daring move at the time. To emphasize their new risqué look, the flappers often wore nylons stocking and wore expensive looking pumps or high heels. 

The Bobby Sox Age of the 40s

However, by 1940s the flapper age was losing its appeal. Young girls now adopted a more wholesome look which is today called the Bobby Sox look. In place of a vertical dress they often shied away from dresses and started to wear full bodied skirts with tight fitting sweaters. They were known as Bobby Sox girls because they started to wear either saddle shoes or loafers with ankle high socks and showed bare legs instead of wearing pumps and nylons. 

The Rock and Roll Age.

While the Jazz Age and its successor had a distinctive style, what was notable about the growth our Rock and Roll Age was its fleeting embrace of multiple styles. There were perhaps three reasons for this growth of diversity. First, as the teenager population dramatically increased in size, it was impossible for just one style to appeal to all young people. Secondly in its embrace of modernity, the post WWII generation also seemed intent on trying out a successor of styles, none of which seemed to last more than a few years. Thirdly, in the Rock and Roll age more so than in the Jazz age, teenagers, who had embraced a culture that stressed individuality, were always striving to try something new. 

If we take hair as an example, long hair was back in style after the short and rather plain styles of World War II. This so called bouffant hair or long hair style which got its name from a French word which means to puff or fluff up, first appeared in the late 1950s and became popular because of two innovations in the late 1950s: the roller which was used to lift and wind hair, and lacquer spray which held the curves of the large bouffant in place. Teenagers who would set their hair in heavy roller every night often slept with their rollers in the hope of appearing more attractive the next day at school.

However, by the 1960s Jacqueline Kenney helped popularize a variant on the Bouffant hairdo which became know as the flip style which was a bouncy hairdo where the end of a woman’s long hair was flipped upward. This style which was worn by many young women in the 1960s, including many of our female classmates, was soon copied by Raquel Welch, Jane Fonda and Catherine Deneuve.

But the Bouffant wave soon modified by some young teenagers into a Beehive, a hair style in which long hair is piled up in conical shape on the top of the head. Celebrities like Bridgett Bardo, Priscilla Pressley to Tammy Wynette helped popularized the style in the 1960s.

Despite the Beehives appeal, the younger generation’s desire to constantly remake themselves eventually led  many of them to adopt a more radical turn at the end of the decade. As the Viet Nam war lingered on and the hippie movement arose to oppose it, more women embraced longer and more unkempt hairdos to signal their displeasure with public policies.

The style by which young women wore their hair now became a means by which they elected to challenge conventional values. As more and more women became concerned about political issues, many choose to wear unkempt long hair either middle parted or with bangs that fell below the eyebrows to proclaim their independence from societal norms.

Changing Notions of Fashion.

The change in hair styles was also reflected in how women dressed. It is possible to generally identify four trends in women’s clothes during the Rock and Roll Age. 

First, in the early 1950s women stressed elegance, often bought glamorous clothes, and stressed European high fashion. Many women eagerly embraced the French style of Christian Dior with its nipped in the waist and full skirted silhouette. Among our female classmates this closest we came to this fascination with European fashion or quasi high fashion was reflected in the popularity of Lanz dresses, a style, which originated in Austria, which was worn by many of our classmates when we were in Jr. high and high school,

However with time the above female fashion became straighter and slimmer. But the early 1960s no one style dominated teenager let alone women’s fashion. In this second period in the 60s, skirts could be full or narrow and dresses could be form fitting sheaths and or looser hung sack like dresses.

By the middle of the 60s, young Americans began to adopt a third style as they began to wear mini skirts, a fashion designed made popular in England. To described this new trend, in which women’s skirts were four or five inches about the knee, people talked about women showing more skin.  This new style led to people coining a new word “expose” in the 1960s to capture this new sexually charged change in women’s fashion. Nancy Sinatra’s popular song “These boots were meant for walking” completed this new look as many daring young women combined white boots with colorful mini skirts. For those women with more modest taste, the decision to wear panty hose helped to mute the controversy about miniskirts. 

Finally, with the rise of a more combative youth culture, young women and even some professional women often embraced a fourth style in which anything seemed appropriate. The mini dress and panty hose often gave way to blue jeans, a sweatshirt and tennis shoes. While in the 1950s young women wanted to be fashionable, by the end of the 1960s many teenagers and college women wanted to be non conformist and adopted a unisex look to express their individuality.

                                    What Should a Teenager Look Like

                                                The Case of Men

If young women went through a dizzying array of hair and fashion choices, males went through a more modest array of appearance changes.

In terms of hairdos there were five main hair styles that defined the age. First was the Pompadour made popular by Elvis Presley, James Dean and Little Richard. It was made popular by some of the earliest Rock and Roll singers, both white and black. In this hairstyle men combed their hair upwards and back creating a high and voluminous pomp on top. It is the male counterpart of the female Beehive hairdo. 

While early Rock stars favored a Pompadour hair style, men from the military and many athletic teenagers in the 1950s, who saw Johnny Unites, the famous quarterback of the Baltimore Colts, as their idol, imitated him by cutting their hair in a Flattop style. This style was almost the polar opposite of a Pompadou as it a very short haircut that was level at the top.

By the time we went to high school most men wore a Classic 60s hair cut which was parted on the side and moderately combed over the top of the scalp. Other names associated with this hair do was the Ivy League look or just the Side Part. 

In contrast individuals who wanted to make more of a rebellious statement and act like the tough guys in school often combed their hair in a Duck Tail often combined with a modest Pompadour. They were often known as Greasers and this hair style was popular in John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John’s movie Grease.

By the end of the 1960s as the youth culture began to embrace the Hippie culture, long unkempt hair was in and many young men wore their hair shoulder length.  In a strange twist on sexual differences, young men and women often had embraced comparable hair styles.

Finally, if we look at clothes, male teenager went from wearing khaki and corduroy pants to wearing jeans, and shirts to sweatshirts. By the end of the 60s the style of men’s clothing, like female clothing, was noted for its absence of style as just about anything was acceptable. Once again, men and women also acquired similar hair and clothing styles. By the end of the 1960s a hippie unisex culture had emerged that appealed to some, but certainly not all teenagers.

                                       The New Teenage Culture of Dating          

                                                 The Desire for Privacy

A third important part of the new youth cultured that developed in the 1960s involved the desire of young people for a personal sense of space or privacy. 

In the early part of the 20th century, privacy was not a major value in American households. After all most Americans were not that well off and most homes built before 1940s were less than 900 square feet and were often built in a Craftsman style in which a large porch marked the entrance to the home. In California, a popular variant of this architectural style was called the California bungalow. 

Since homes were very small, teenagers often did not have their own room. Because before 1930s less than half of the homes had electricity, there was no reason for children let alone adult to stay inside their house as most homes lacked both radios and televisions. Since air conditioning did not become common in most American homes until the 1960s, most American families retreated to the outdoor porch where they socialized in the evening to cool off. Since these early Craftsman homes lacked the space to insure privacy to your teenagers, young children had to constantly interact with their parents.

Retiring Inside

However by the 1940s Americans had become wealthier and architectural styles began to change. By the post WWII period families who had once lived in homes where life centered on socializing on their front porch, now retired inward. California where builders had once constructed many bungalow homes in the early part of the century with front porches, now replaced them with ranch style homes which eliminated the porch all together. Increasingly ranch style home or in Sacramento Eichler homes in South Land Park, became the preferred style of home

Besides changing their styles, homes became bigger, and as families acquired radios and even TVs, teenagers often acquired the right to choose their own type of entertainmentin their own rooms. In these newfound ranch homes, teenagers increasingly began to insist on the privacy of their own rooms. In place of the whole family listening to the same radio stations, young teenagers acquired the right to choose their own type of entertainment,

This change is evident in the neighborhoods that serviced McClatchy. Most of the homes at the northern border of McClatchy’s district close to Broadway were 900 square foot California Bungalow homes. As Sacramento grew and became more prosperous, homes built south of Broadway were increasingly ranch style homes that were often 1500 sq. feet or 50% larger than older Bungalow homes. In the neighborhoods that attended Joaquin Miller, many families even lived in Eichler homes that were over 2000 square feet, a 100% increase over the earlier built Bungalow homes, a size which often guaranteeing every teenager his or her own private room.

If changing architectural styles facilitated a new teenager culture, the growing popularity of automobiles played an evenmore revolutionary role in the creation of this new youth culture.The growth of American families which enabled them to afford a car, created a whole new realm of independence and freedom for young people. 

The Rise of Modern Dating

One of the most striking changes in our lives as teenagers was the changing nature of dating patterns in the 50s. Prior to WWII, most young people never dated as we did in the 1960s. Before cars became widespread, men and women had few chances to be alone. Whether it was on the front porch on in the family’s living rooms, teenagers found that their interactions withthe opposite sex were often chaperoned by the girl’s parents.

However as people become more prosperous after WWII, teenagers increasingly had the opportunity to borrow their dad’s car which enabled them to escape the preying eyes oftheir date’s parents, enjoying in the process a degree of privacy with their dates that their parents had never enjoyed. 

In the 1960s guys and their date could spend time alone going to movies, eating at a fast food restaurant or enjoying a sundae at Vics, and depending on the degree of affection making out in the car before the night ended. The degree of freedom and privacy enjoyed by teenagers of our age was unprecedented in the 1960s.

                                      The Growth of Teenager Entertainment

Finally, as the number of young people multiplied, their increasingly well to do families enabled their children to pursue their own unique form of entertainment. For example, in the Jazz Age the wealthy often sent their teenage sons and daughters off to Ivy League colleges. In the Jazz Age colleges were more like country clubs for wealthy teenagers and flappers than what we think of colleges today. Most of those attending were not primarily interesting in learning a vocation or acquiring an education. On the contrary they went to college to primarily enjoy themselves and perhaps make connections thatwould later be useful in the business world.

The Growth of Sports

As part of their enjoyment college students at Ivy League colleges soon made football a favorite pastime. While initially football was primary an amusing exercise at private colleges in the northeast, the sports soon appealed to all colleges as well as high schools inAmerica.  Our high school interest in football was merely a continuation of student behavior that began in the Jazz age. To the surprise of many, a form of entertainment that initially appeal to young people in the 1920s and 1960s soon became a national pastime.

The Growth of Music

While the growth of sports was certainly a distinguishing feature of this new youth culture in America, it paled in comparison to the growing importance of music to young people. With the growing popularity of radio and record players in the 1920s, young people began to listen to music as their favorite pastime. Increasingly as part of this new youth culture, teenagers wanted to purchase a radio, a record player, as well as 45 records to enhance their listening pleasure.  While the 1920s wanted to listen to Jazz, our generation wanted to listen to listen to either Rock and Rock or the Rhythm and Blues.

Regardless of what style of music these different decades preferred, the appeal of radio and records in both the 20s and 60s was obviously. Unlike going to the movies which involved a major expense each time, teenagers realized that if the bought a radio or record players they could listed to their favorite form of entertainment for hours without incurring any other costs.

Ironically enough the primitive technology of the 1930s ending up shaping the listening habits of America during our high school days. When records were first made, companies were only able to record music for roughly 3 minutes. If you are old enough to remember, records came in three sizes 78s, 45s or 33s. These sizes refereed to the number of revolutions per minutes the record revolved on the turntable. The only way companies could record longer songs was to either slow down the revolutions per minute or to cut more groves in the vinyl record disc. It was only when the speed of the record was slowed to 33rpms, that a record could hold a song for a time period longer than 3 minutes.

But by the time technology had advanced to the point where it could alter America’s listening habits, people in general and teenagers in particular had become accustomed to hearing songs that lasted only 3 minutes. When the technology finally evolved to record longer lasting song tracks, teenagers felt that 3 minutes was the appropriate time for a song to last. An ancient and obsolete technology had over time altered and limited the way we listen to music even today.

Regardless of its format music quickly became an integral part of the lifestyle of most adolescents. Despite its popularity among teenagers, few radio stations had designed programs specifically to appeal to teenagers. But by early 1950s that process began to change. As TV became popular after WWII, adults began to abandon their interest in the radio and elected to enjoy their entertainment time by watching television. 

In light of the changing demographics, AM and FM radio stations started orienting their programming to young teenagers which helped them think of themselves as a unique part of society. Two factors made the radio popular among teenagers. By 1952 half of all cars came equipped with radios. As increasingly the dating culture of teenagers revolved around being alone with your date in the car, teenagers associated dating with listening to music. Secondly, this process was made even more attractive by the rise of the Dis Jockey who often talked about issues that troubled teenagers. In the movie American Graffiti, Wolfman Jack, is comparable to a teenager guru whom teenagers seek out for advice.  

The growing popularity of this new form radio entertainment helped the emerging youth culture to achieve a distinctive identity that set them apart from their parents.  

                                                   A Summary

But the change in music was only part of this newly emerging youth movement.  By the 1960s a teen culture had evolved that centered around the car, the radio, music, high school clubs and rallies, Friday night football games, individual dating, make out parties, the latest harirdos and the constantly changing fashion in teeneage clothing. In pursuit of self- expression and excitement, teenagers of the post WWII generation had forged a separate and unique youth culture that found its best depiction in George Lucas’ movie “American Graffiti.” While our generation cruised K Street in Sacramento, rather than Modesto, the significant of our actions was that all over the country young people had created a new culture that teenagers in every city of America seemed to share. Tomorrow we will try to see how the growth of this new teenage population with its distinctive youth culture helped to rehaped the social norms of the US. 

 

 

         


12/06/23 12:36 PM #451    

 

Bill Kelso

                                                (3)

                  The Impact of our Youth Culture on America

While the dramatic increase in the size of the teenager population as well as its creation of a unique youth-oriented culture was an interesting story in and of itself, the impact this new culture had on America was an even bigger story. 

But because as teenagers we were often preoccupied with our own personal lives, we were often unaware of the collective impact our individual decisions had on American society.

As we shall soon see one of the major unanticipated consequences of the 1960s embrace of a new style of music was the creation of a new form of popular culture that enhanced the status of African Americans. But perhaps this change is not surprising for if there is one defining event that distinguishes the 1960s from other decades in American history it is the decline of Jim Crow and the growth of the Civil Rights Movement. The youth culture of the 1960s played an important but often unreported role in advancing racial tolerance during this decade. 

They achieved this goal by initially embracing a previously neglected form of music made popular by African Americans.  But in many cases the preferences of young people for Rhythm and Blues as well as Rock and Roll music initially met stiff resistance from their parent’s generation. That resistance to what then was known as race music was part of a large opposition by much of society to complete integration. 

While it does not get the press it deserves, the teenagers of the 1960s who popularized this novel form of music helped break down much of that opposition by the larger adult community. By their listening habits and participation in shows like Dick Clark they gradually showed middle America that they had nothing to fear by their embrace of African American music and culture. 

                                             The Rise of Rock and Roll

As noted above the first impact of this new youth culture on American society, which often unnerved their parents, was a dramatic shift in the musical tastes of their children. In the 1940s and the 50s, American adult musical tastes were shaped by the Age of the Crooner, in which the likes of Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennet sang slow and somewhat commonplace songs.  By the late 1950s and 60s teenagers had rebelled against much of the music of their parents and supported the pounding beat of Rock and Roll and Rhythm and Blues.

As American teenagers often went into a frenzy over singers like Elvis Presley, middle class America became worried about the lack of restraint among their children, Even more worrisome for many white parents, their kids seemed to have embraced African American music and dance that their parents found frighteningly provocative, seeming undermining traditional conventional American values.

                                    The Rise of an Egalitarian Popular Culture

As mentioned previously the second impact of our expansive growth in the teenager population and its new musical interests was the growth of a new popular and political culture which was more tolerant of racial difference and supportive of integration in an age noted for racial prejudice. 

Despite the significance of these changes, as young teenagers we were probably not aware that the first two major institutions to become partially integrated in America after the war were the US Army and the musical and dance industry. While President Truman has accomplished the first goal by an executive order, in the latter case our generation of high school students had voluntarily sought to incorporate African American music into our lives. Rather than ignoring or segregating African song and dance culture, the teenage generation of the 1960s eagerly embraced it.

Why and how did this change occur? Part of the answer lies with technology. As American electronics led to the growth of radio stations in the 1950s, young Americans became aware for the first time of both African American and Country western music. In contrast to the bland tunes of the crooners and the playbook of Tin Pan Alley, young Americans kids found this new ethnic kind of music appealing.

Why the Appeal of a New Culture

What was the cause of this appeal? The answer appears to be three fold. First Rock and Roll was a musical genre that people loved to dance to. However, when the Big Bands became financially impossible to maintain at the end of World War II, Americans lacked both the opportunity as well as a type of music they could dance to. The crooners who replaced the Big Bands at the end of war sang bland romantic ballads that were great to listen to if you wanted a serene quiet afternoon. But their style of music rarely stimulated anyone to spend the evening on the dance floor. However, as more and more young people attended school, they wanted a chance to dance the night away with their new dates. That was a desire that Rock and Roll easily satisfied.

Secondly, the new music of the 1960s seemed to meet an emotional need for many teenagers that most conventional American songs lacked.  If you happened to read an excellent comment by Kurli Thompson several months back, she mentioned that when she taught high school her students often seemed like they were the walking wounded. But probably for every generation, including ours in the 1960s, many teenagers felt like they were the walking wounded as they struggled to adjust to high school life. Also many of us were hoping to find a soul mate to share the difficulties of growing up. But aside from a few success stories, most high school romances failed, leaving people feeling isolated and alone. But fortunately in listening to Rock and Roll music many young teenagers found a sense of solace and peace of mind that they often could not find with their parents or even close friends. 

If you look at the titles of major Rock and Roll songs in the sixties, they include By By Love, That Will Be the Day, Breaking My HeartWhen Will I Be Loved?, and Only the Strong Survive.

Regardless of what emotion you were feeling after a bad breakup, there was also a Rhythm and Blues or Rock and  Roll song that consoled you by expressing that exact feeling in its lyrics.

Thirdly part of the appeal of this new form of music may reflect the fact that a whole generation of young kids who were struggling to grow up, often felt restrained by the more conservative tastes of their parents whose life often seemed too restricted or restrained. For young people who were trying to fit in with society while simultaneously trying to rebel against the monotony of adult society, the novelty and unusual beat of African American music seemed appealing. While modern American life stressed moderation and restraint, rhythm and blues stressed liberation, energy and a more intense way of living life. 

Before our generation knew it, a young Scotch Irish singer from Memphis, named Elvis Presley, tried to combine the best of Country music and African American music to create rock and roll. The music electrified young people and often scared their parents who often did not know what to make of this new music and its racial overtones. 

Prior to the 1970s, American music had been dominated by the Germans who in the 17th to the 19th century had developed Baroque, Classical and Romantic forms of music. In addition, most of the modern musical instruments such as the clarinet, saxophone, trumpet and piano were invented by Europeans. At the turn of the century most American cities, which had been heavily influenced by the German musical tradition, established brass bands, as exemplified in the movie “The Music Man”.

However in the 1950s and 60s we see a major shift in American popular culture as we witness both the Africanization of American music and the Americanization of African Music. As we shall soon see, African Americans and the Scotch Irish, who had been marginal players in American society, soon came to play a dominate role in shaping American culture. 

A New Synthesis of African and American Culture

The new synthesis of contrasting musical styles was first seen during the 1920s when Jazz became popular. While Africa developed this new genre of music, they used European woodwind and horn instruments in the development of Jazz. Later in the 1960s African music was further Americanized when blacks developed the Blues in the Delta region of northern Mississippi which morphed into R&B or Rhythm and the Blues.  While the phrasing and tempo of the music were all based on traditional African tunes, the Blues artists, like their Jazz counterparts, adopted western instruments to play their music. The guitar, which is the heart of most R&B as well as Rock and Roll bands, originated in Spain and had been introduced in this country by the Scotch Irish who used it in the creation of Country music.

The New Stress on Rhythm

But the synthesis of different musical tradition was not one sided. As we shall see later, American music was also significantly Africanized, especially rock and roll. Whereas as traditional western music has spent much of its history stressing harmony, and melody African music was unique in its stress on rhythm. 

The Development of Syncopation

But equally importantly while African America music was noted for stressing rhythms, it was also famous for its unusual rhythms. This process which is called syncopation involves playing rhythms that accent or emphasize the offbeats. For instance, if a song had a 4/4 time signature you would normally stress the first and third beat. However, in much of Rhythm and Blues music as well as Rock and Roll, the musicians emphasize the second and fourth beat. 

Multi Complex Rhythms

Finally as Rhythms and Blues evolved over time into new genres like Funk, African American artists like James Brown developed a form of Rhythm and Blues music that was also characterized by multi rhythms or polyrhythms. In contrast to traditional western music black music increasingly had unusual and complex rhythm patterns that seemed to infuse a sense of life and excitement into their music. This stress on rhythm made black music very appealing to any young people who wanted to kick up their heels and dance.

To appreciate the appeal of rhythm for anyone listening to music today, all you have to do is hear Michael Jackson’s song Beat It or Billie Jean or James Brown rendering of Living In America to understand why Rhythm and Blues and its stress on a pounding beat was so popular to young people.

 Non Western African Americn Dances

Similarly whereas western music had seen music and dance as two separate forms of entertainment, African Americans combined them. While singing groups like Beetles or crooners like Barbara Streisand appeared stationary and erect as they belted out their tunes, singing groups from Motown to Michael Jackson combined music and dance which excited young audiences. Elvis Presley, who synthesized black and white music was also notorious for his swiveled hip dancing, which often shocked middle America with his novel dance steps.

Besides the dance moves of Black artists, African American singers gave the younger generation a whole new array of dance steps that significantly departed from the stress on couple dancing popular in western music. In place of western dances like the Waltz, which emphasized dances by couples, African American culture popularized communal dances like the Stroll, which was performed on every episode of American Bandstand. Yet other black artists like Chubby Checker also popularized individual dances like the Twist and a countless array of spinoffs of that dance such as the Jerk, the Pony the Watusi and even the Mash Potato. While teenagers in the Age of the Crooners found the ballads of people like Perry Como hard to dance to, black music of the 50s and 60s energized teenagers and made them eager to dance again. Although Kevin Bacon’s movie “Footloose” was made in the 1980s, it perhaps likewise captured that mood of teenagers in the decade we graduated from McClatchy. 

By the time the 1970s finally arrived there had been a dramatic change in American popular culture. Two ethnic and racial groups, African Americans and Scotch Irish, who had been on the margins of American society, were now dominant forces in shaping popular culture. In the 1970s as sporting events came to rival music in defining popular culture in American life, blacks but not the Scotch Irish, also came to play a highly visible role in this new dimension of American culture.

                                        The Growth of the Entertainment Age

Finally a third way in which our generation helped dramatically transformed America was in its impact on the economy. As we noted in an earlier post, the start of the 20thcentury is called the “Industrialized Age”.  Unfortunately, in the 1970s America began a process of deindustrialization which led to the loss of many working class jobs. 

Prior to the 1960s economists saw the American economy as consisting of three legs, 1) finance, 2) service and 3) manufacturing. In the 1970s the third leg of the economy had declined as America reduce its tariffs and embraced globalization. 

However, offsetting the above negative development was the creation of two more innovative ages in the middle of the 20th century. Economists tend to call these new ages the rise of the Information Age as well as the Entertainment Age in America. While the 19th and early 20th century was transformed by the rise of manufacturing, the latter part of the 20th century was transformed by the rise of Silicon Valley and the Entertainment Industry, two new industries which have dramatically altered how we currently live our lives today. 

In place of a three legged economy we now had a five legged economy where information and entertainment complemented the operations of the service, finance and industrial sectors of the economy.

How this New Age Benefitted Minorities

Aside from diversifying the economy, the above changes had dramatic consequences for minority groups. The growth of these two new legs of the economy has dramatically enhanced the opportunities for upward mobility for both Asian Americans and African Americans. While the growth of the Information Age has created numerous job opportunities for the Asian community in Silicon valey, the growth of the New Entertainment Age has primarily benefited African Americas in the sports and entertainment world. 

Whereas the traditional ethnic groups such as the English, Germans, Jewish and Irish had come to dominate the early American economy, minorities such as Asians and African Americans were dominating these two new elements in our economy,  

For instance, while Asians makeup 7% of the present American population, over 50% of the employees in Silicon Valley are now Asian Americans. In many cases they occupy the most prestigious positions instance in this new industry. For instance, the CEOs of both Micro soft and Google are both immigrants from India. 

In a similar vein African Americans have now come to dominate professional sports as well as the music industry. Whether it was the numerous stars of Motown, or Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin merging Black Gospel music and Rhythm and Blues to create Soul music, Black artists were key figures in creating popular music. Even when white artists appeared to create new genres of rock music, much of their musical phrasing and rhythms were heavily influenced by black inspired Rhythm and Blues. For instance, the Beatles, who were part of the British invasion of Music life, felt so frustrated over their inability to duplicate the appeal of black music, that they good naturedly named one of their albums Rubber Soul, a failed attempt to duplicate Black Soul music.

As our economy has taken on new directions, minority groups who were often on the periphery of American society have financially prospered as they now appear to have met the information and entertainment needs of the American public.

 

                  


12/06/23 01:03 PM #452    

 

Bill Kelso

                                            (4)                                    

                                   A Summing Up

                How Our Generation Reshaped America

In light of the above developments, we have to realize that whether it is our McClatchy classmates getting on David’s website to learn about our reunions or senior citizens downloading tunes from Spotify for their workout at the local gym, our generation helped ushed in a new American economy that has been preoccupied with entertaining us and making our lives enjoyable. 

While we did not realize it when we turned 18, the new youth culture of the 1960s played a key role in the development of both this Entertainment Age as well as the growth of a more tolerant and racially integrated society. 

The Jazz Age & The Rock and Roll Age

Despite the distinctive 40 years that separate the two periods, many want to compare the Jazz Age with our own Rock and Roll Age. 

In both cases, the age was defined by the development of a youth culture, primarily people in their early 20s for the Jazz Age and a slightly younger teenage population during our high school days. In both situations young people served in the army to fight in WWI during the Jazz Age and later participated in the Vietnam War during the 1960s. Similarly, both time periods were identified with the creation of novel forms of music: Jazz in the 1920s and Rhythm and Blues as well as Rock and Roll in the 1960s. Both ages also led to excesses as flappers spent too much time getting drunk in speakeasies while too many of our peers acquired addictive drug habits limiting their future opportunities. 

However, despite the superficial similarities, I want to argue that the two major youth cultures were very different. 

While novelists like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway felt that the Jazz Age was a failure they often focused on different explanation for that failure. In Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises” he felt those who had fought in the war had become disillusioned and were a lost generation without direction or purpose. However, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel “The Great Gatsby” he suggested that the failure of the Jazz Age reflected the age’s belief that the selfish pursuit of making money would somehow give shape and form to their sense of emptiness.

The Differences between the Two Ages.

While the 1960s has never had a novelist comparable to Hemingway or Fitzgerald to describe our teenage years, we can nevertheless identify key differences. First the young people who came of age in the 60s were neither disillusioned nor lost. They were often critical of their country’s foreign or racial policies but they were hardly young people who lacked direction or purpose.

But even more importantly the Rock and Roll generation of the 1960s were radically different from the flappers and young people Fitzgerald described. With the growth of the hippie generation at the end of the 60s, the youth culture of the Rock and Roll was more idealistic than overly materialistic. In place of believing that making more money would provide them with a fulfilling life, they sought to build a more egalitarian and humane world. While many of their notions about achieving peace and brotherhood were naïve, their outlook on life was very different from that of the Jazz Age. 

Admittedly there was a self destructive tendency among many young people in the 1960s as Timothy Leary’s advice to Tune in, Turn on, Drop Out lead many young people astray.

Similarly, the 1960s had its faults as it witnessed a rising crime rate, the breakdown of the family, a growing number of children born out of wedlock who were abandoned by their fathers, and a flawed set of government policies called the "Great Society" to end poverty which actually increased rather than decreased the rate of poverty, But these faults were the consequences of inept prosecutors, and poorly designed government programs rather than the faults of our youth culture.

Without minimizing the faults of the Rock and Roll Age, I want to argue that the expansive teenage population of the 1960s had a much more lasting and benign impact on American life than the Jazz Age.

Our class can be proud of its legacy as it promoted a popular music culture that has swept the world and embraced a more tolerant and diverse society that has enabled previously marginal groups to achieve upward mobility. And it helped to diversity our economy which enabled America to become more resilient as our manufacturing sector faltered in the 70s. In this sense our McClatchy class was not only affected by changing national events, but also helped initiate and shape these national developments in a positive direction. As our time as a class approaches the end, we can be proud of our achievements as American teenagers.

 


03/04/24 06:19 AM #453    

 

Bill Kelso

                  The Changing Nature of Western Music

In a pervious discussion about how life has changed since we graduated from high school, we mentioned that African Americans have come to play a dominant role in shaping American music. It started in the 1920s with the creation of Jazz, expanded in the 50s and 60s with the development of Rhythm and Blues and was further enhanced in the 70s and 80s as Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin combined Black Gospel music with Rhythm and Blues to create Soul Music.

Among its many features was its stress on complex rhythms and its fusion of music and dance.

However in the late 1980s Paul Simon discovered than an even better example of African American influence on music was to be found in Brazil with its nationally known Samba or Samba Reggae Music.

The country had unusual Samba Bands made up of only flamboyant drummers who played even more complex rhythms than American rhythm and blues. Whereas western music had stressed melody and harmony, Brazilian music is famous for its remarkable emphasis on rhythm.

The Brazilian experience was so notable that later Michael Jackson also went to Brazil to film his video of “Nobody Cares About Us”

Both of these video have become very popular videos as well as classic examples of how African Americans contributed to the growth of popular music.

Michael Jackson in Rio

Paul Simon Singing “The Obvious child” in Brazil

In addition to the videos of famous American singers performing in Brazil, many local residents have also posted videos of Brazilian bands entertaining their neighbors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyTdnj0eulo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvRjL017oUo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3o30YJiWsc

Brazilian culture has many attractive features. For instance, you often see the above pattern of behavior in Brazil because music and dance plays a much larger role in the lives of Brazilians than it does for most Americans. While most Americans are more circumspect and restrained in their everyday lives. Brazilians see music as part their desire to live a more spontaneous and effusive lifestyle.

Brazilians are also a demonstrative and outgoing people who place a lot of emphasis on maintaining friendship and expressing their common sense of joy in being alive by dancing and singing with one another. Unlike many Americans who are more cavalier and indifferent about their relationships, Brazilians stress the use of music to enhance and cement their personal ties. During carnival you can hear and see Samba dance bands like those shown above on almost every other street corner in Rio as Brazilians hug one another and dance the night away.

Despite their much lower standard of living, Brazilians also seem to have a knack for knowing how to enjoy life.

If you want to hear some great music as well as appreciate the impact of African music on popular music, try watching the above videos.  You shouuld be able to just hit the videolink and get the  video. If that does not work, just copy the above addresses and put them in your search engine, hit the enter button and you should be able to watch some fascinating musical videos. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


03/05/24 04:35 AM #454    

 

Bill Kelso

                One More Fabulous Braziian Band

Here is one more wonderfu Brazilian Band. It seems like almost every other Brazilian owns a drum. Brazil has so many Samba dance bands, many of them dominated by women.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyTia863Be0


03/06/24 08:46 AM #455    

 

Bonnie De Angelis (Stormont)

Awesome sauce!!  I love this!  🎵. Thanks for posting Bill!


03/06/24 03:47 PM #456    

 

Barbara Alexander

Hi Bill. I've been enjoying your contributions to these pages. Lots of interesting info that I didn't know. I especially enjoy your posts on music. Fascinating! Thanks, Barbara


03/06/24 09:08 PM #457    

Susie Weidman (Arnold)

Bill, thanks for sharing this wonderful music.  You and Linda were fortunate to have just been in Brazil and to see and listen in person to this wonderful music. 🥁🎶. Susie


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