etcetera

countries of origin

Watching football is always fun. But since I've started watching football, I've learned a lot about geographical, historical and cultural aspects of many countries, especially thanks to (Ameya and Amey) Kelkar. Here's what I learnt from the player's surnames and their countries.

1. All Greek surnames generally end with -is or rarely with -ou. You also find it in Australia because of large number of Greeks in Melbourne, e.g. Philipousis, Lazaridis
2. All the Mc's are scots. It means 'son of-'. e.g. McDonald means 'son of Donald'
3. All the O's are Irish. It means 'decendent of-', e.g. O'Neil means 'decendent of Neil'
4. The name ending with '-sson' is generally Swedish. e.g. Henderik Larsson, Sven Goran Eriksson
5. Also name ending with '-sen' is generally Dane, e.g., Sorensen, Larsen
6. Dutch names as everybody knows often contain 'van' or 'van der'. It denotes place of origin, e.g. van Nistelrooy means 'from Nistelrooy'. Another thing about Dutch is that vowels often appear in pair, e.g., Ruud, Roy Makaay
7. If name contains '-ei', '-dt', '-eu','-sch' then it's generally German, or probably Austrian. And also names containing umlaut, which is transcripted in English with 'e' following vowel, e.g. Mueller, Schroeder.
8. Russian names as many know are long and end with '-ov' or '-sky'. Also there are some which end with '-in'.e.g. Smertin ( ex-Chelsea), Haffkin Institute (the one in Mumbai. He is Russian and not British). Female names change from '-ov' to '-ova'
9. If something ends with '-o' or '-nho' , he's Portugese. And there are all those D' surnames as well
10. Spaniards, hmm... I don't know much. But remember pronouncing 'j' as 'h' as in 'Jose'.
11. Italians: the ones ending with 'i'
12. '-sky' are also Polish many times. It is especially true, if you are reading some American name. e.g. Tomas Radzinsky'. Poles also have '-cz' or '-sz' in their names
13. '-enko'. mostly Ukrainian. Who can forget Shevchenko
14. Coming to Asia, if name has three parts, each with at most two syllables he must be Korean. e.g. ManU's Park-Ji-Sung
15. Chinese generally have two parts only in their names.
16. Japanese have two parts, but fairly long compared to Chinese and generally contain '-aa' sound. ,e.g., Nakata( Bolton), Toshiba
17. Moving west, Arab names are easy to identify.
18. In Africa those in North have a muslim name in their name, e.g., El-Hadji-Diouf (Bolton), Mohammed Sissoko( Liv). Names which are difficult to pronounce, because of two consonents together are generally from southern part of continent.e.g. Ntini. People from former French colonies contain some Christian French name.e.g. Didier Drogdba
19. If there is apostrophe between vowels, chances are that he's from some Polynasian islands like Tonga, Vainuatu, Samoa, Fiji, etc.

Oh,this list has become very long. I didn't expect it to stretch this much. Chalega. I wanted to enlist it some day. But enough for today. I hope you like it.

posted by ninad @ 9:44 pm