Stuff You Should Know - What's in a surname?

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Surnames are way more interesting that you think, trust us. Just hit play and prepare to be wowed.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. It's just the two of us kind of like old times, huh Chuck? Sure. And this is Stuff You Should,

it's not the full thing without Jerry. That's right. But you said you're Josh Clark, don't you mean Josh Clark? Yeah, that is what my name is from. It's one of the most boring names you could have, but it is my last name. And that's what we're talking about. I don't even know my, I mean, I know the like country of origin and stuff for Bryant, but I don't really know. Like this is one of those episodes where I was constantly going, oh, that's where that came from. Oh, that's interesting, but I didn't have anything for me. I have something for you friend. You got the origin of Bryant? No, origin of Wayne. Oh, okay, let's hear it. It denotes a driver or builder of wagons. That's you buddy in a nutshell. Well, that was my surname.

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, it still works for your middle name. It's not like it just loses all meaning when it gets moved to the middle. Right. Builder wagons, it's me. Or driver, you could have been a driver too. Chuck wagon. Or a double trouble, a builder driver of wagons. Right. Yeah. So that's it. But we're not talking about middle names. We're not even really talking about first names. We're talking about surnames, which if you've ever been confused about which one that is, it's the last name. It's the family name. Generally. Yes. And depending on where you live in the world, it might come before your first name. It might come after it. There might be a couple of surnames involved. There may be a hyphen joining them. There's a lot of different things

you can do with surnames. And like you, I was like, oh, okay, there's actually a lot of interesting stuff to this. So good pick. And thanks to the Grabster for helping us out. Yeah. And, you know, Ed, we'll feature later on because I don't want to spoil it yet, but his last name is interesting. Because this Polish and Polish names are generally interesting in how they look on paper, on the page. Sure. And are often changed. So we're just, we're going to float that out there as a teaser. We're going to be talking about Ed's last name. And speaking of it being on paper, I thought it was a Polish name all this time. I'm glad you said something first. The deal with surnames, though, is they have been around a lot less long. That's one way to say it,

than a given name or a first name. Like first names, they came first, like from the beginnings of people, like with tuk-tuk, people wanted to call each other things. And so people would just give each other names. But surnames were invented much, much, much later, for reasons we're going to talk about, kind of aroundish the 11th century. Yeah, that's for like England, Western Europe. There were places where they came along much earlier. Like I think in China, they've been in use for about 3,000 years, as far as we can tell. Yeah. And then in Rome, there were different naming conventions that had two names, sometimes three names, a couple thousand years ago. So yeah, surnames are in England, at least, or Western Europe.

They are definitely latecomers, relatively speaking. Yeah. And one of the reasons you might think like, why would you need a surname? And there are a bunch of reasons. One of which, like one of the earliest reasons, was that there were more people being born. And so your little quaint town that had John and Jane, everyone who John and Jane were, but then as more and more people are born, that town gets bigger and bigger, there's more Johns and Janes, it was literally just like a way to differentiate people. Yeah, exactly. And then also, as people started to travel more, that also kind of called for people to differentiate themselves a little bit too. So population pressure is a really good reason, a really good

explainer for why there were such things as surnames, why they came along. There's just more people, so you needed to be able to say, no, not Jane, that Jane, the other Jane. People got really sick of doing that, especially if a third Jane came along, they'd just pull their hair out and be mad all the time. Right. And then by the time people owned property or had legal things to transfer to one another, titles and things like that, then you had to have surnames. So nobles, of course, there's a lot of class that plays into this, because a certain class of people were landowners and had official titles. So these nobles adopted these surnames, or maybe the monarch said, you have to have a surname, because we need to know the rights of succession of your land,

or it's just got to all legally check out. So being John isn't enough anymore. Yeah, it's strange to think of, but naming somebody and saying, either choose a name or I'm going to choose one for you, it was a way for the ruling class of a civilization to basically track people, keep them in line, keep one group from marrying another group and consolidating power. And it's interesting because they think that in China, one of the reasons why the surnames came along 3,000 years ago was because of population pressure, but also because the Zhu Dynasty, and I'm probably not saying that correctly, I think it's Z-H-O-U, is that right? Zhao, I'm going to go with Zhao. I'm just feeling a little spicy today.

I thought it was Z-H-A-O, or am I thinking of something different? Okay, so even more, I'm going with Zhao. But anyway, the Zhao dynasty was saying, we want to keep track of you nobles, and a good way to do that is to label something, that's how you keep track of something. And that's one of the other reasons why these surnames came along in China. And the same thing played out a couple thousand years later in England for basically the same reasons. That's right. And by the way, I was wrong. It is Z-H-O-W, or I'm sorry, O-U. Okay, I'm going to go with Zhao then. Are you talking about William I? Yeah, the conqueror.

And his doomsday book, which, boy, if there was ever a book that was mistitled, I know. It's not doomsday, it's domesday, D-O-M-E-S-D-A-Y. But when you look at it, you just want to say doomsday book. Yeah. But what it was, it was just a survey of land and landowners in 1085 and 1086. And William I commissioned this thing and basically said, all right, we got a book now, so all these informal names aren't going to do it. So we have to have an official historical record of this stuff. So pick a surname. Yeah. It was almost like taking a snapshot of the conventions and the customs of naming people at the time, because William the Conqueror didn't say,

you have to have a surname now. It was more like whatever you go by, you're going to go down in this book as that. Right. And that basically solidified and created that tradition of passing down surnames from that point on. It kind of like kept it going. What is so funny? I'm just trying to think of like, do you want to be John the A-hull the rest of your life? Exactly. That's what you're known as around town. You have a chance here to rewrite things.

Yeah. And if you go back and look, there's a website that Ed found. I'll try to find it later. But it's basically just a tittering tour through medieval England and some of the horrific last names people got saddled with for nicknames. And that became like their last name, like stuff we just can't even possibly say on this podcast. Yeah. And Ed points out too, and just since we're talking about that, that sarcasm is not a recent invention. So you might be called something like you may be John Goodman. Well, not John Goodman. You could be John Goodman. I'm just going with John for everything. When you were like a very like not nice dude, somebody might have said Goodman as a good man.

As a sort of a nod in a wink or a joke or a play on words. Like imagine if John Goodman were basically like Russell Crowe. That gets the point across. He's still on Russell Crowe? I'm trying to throw back here, man. I'm trying to bring everybody back to our period of comfort rather than moving along with everyone else. But it's interesting you mentioned medieval, the medieval period because the Roman system that you talked about, which eventually evolved to a three name system, I think at first, or I guess

before Rome, in different civilizations, they had single names. But then the Romans came along and they had what was called a prey, I guess, prey nomen, which would be the equivalent of a given name, then the nomen, which what we would think of as the last name. And then later on, if you were like an elite, you would have a third name, the cognomen, if you wanted to like show off a little bit and show your status. But it went away after the Romans for a long time and then came back with the Europeans. Yeah, it's really interesting that like the Europeans had all this influence. The Chinese had already invented this for a couple thousand years and it just kind of like

evolved in isolation later on. So it really kind of does just go to show you like surnames or just once you reach a certain point of a civilization or a population growth, it's just something that's just going to come up inevitably organically. It's pretty neat. It is pretty neat. And I know we mentioned some Asian names. I think Korean and Japanese and Chinese are traditionally written with the surname first and then your given name. And then just a few years ago, Japan, I think formally enshrined that and said, you know, we're not going to westernize this anymore. We're going to go with the surname first. Yeah, they're going back to their roots.

I love it. A new kind of suit. That's right. You got that one really? Yeah, sure. Man, Chuck, I'm impressed. Well, since you're impressed, let's take a break. Yeah. Because I don't want to just like bathe in that for a minute. I think it's a wise move. Or rather two minutes and we'll be back and talk about the different types of surnames

and why they came about right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Mangesh Atikulur and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right.

So what's interesting is that surnames take all sorts of different shapes and forms. And there's actually some cultures that just don't have them or don't use them. I believe the Philippines didn't use surnames until they were colonized by Europeans. Yeah, that's what's about right. So I mean, there's some cultures that don't use surnames at all. But among the cultures that do use surnames in different ways, shapes, and forms, there's actually some commonalities, almost universalities among surnames and where they came from and what they mean.

And there's at least four or five that you can kind of hack out that say wherever you go in the world, if they're using surnames, they may have some sort of like version of this. Yeah, and this is the stuff that's really cool, I think. And this found me saying, you know, because Ed gives a bunch of great examples of a surname. And then when you find out how it evolved to be that, you just go, oh, well, that completely makes sense now.

Well, I was about to say something about jobs, but we'll get to jobs in a minute. First, though, is place names, specific place names. If you were, and I think a lot of people know this one, but if you were from a place, you might have been Chuck of Atlanta. Or, you know, if it was in Europe, you might have substituted D-E for the Latin, like Chuck D. Atlanta. Right. And then over time, that D, there's this process that happens to words where if you use a word

for a thousand years, it gets kind of molded and shaped and cut down to a more manageable size. Until you're saying A-L-L and O-M-G. Right, exactly. L-M-F-A-O, because Party Rock is in the house tonight. But it's called truncation. And the same thing happens with names too, so instead of Chuck D. Atlanta, it could just become Chuck D. Atlanta, D-Apostrophe Atlanta. Which is very kind of nice, like I like the way that rings.

D-A-T-L-A-N-T. Yeah, you have to say it like that. Or you could just get rid of that apostrophe and make it one word, Chuck D. Atlanta. Right. And that actually happened with the name Darcy. It used to be somebody, Day Arcy, Arcy is a village, I believe in France or Normandy maybe. And then over time, it became D-Apostrophe Arcy, as in Jefferson Darcy from Married with Children. Or just Darcy, D-A-R-C-Y, as in Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice,

who I presume Jefferson Darcy's character is based on. But if you have the name Darcy, you can almost, I mean, there are other ways that you can acquire a last surname, which we'll see kind of along the way, but chances are you can probably trace that back to the fact that someone in your lineage was from Arcy. Yes, and it also suggests that somewhere back in your lineage, somebody was probably of a noble lineage because it was the nobles who would have taken the place that they were from as their surname, because number one, they would go off to court. So they would be, I'm Jefferson Darcy.

So, you know, not Jefferson, Atlanta, Jefferson Darcy. I'm the one from Darcy or from Arcy, right? A commoner from Arcy would have no reason to say that they're from Arcy because they don't ever leave Arcy. They spent their entire life there. Yeah, exactly. And then also, it let people know that you were, you basically like ruled that land that you were from. That was that. And it's called a toponymic name, where it's a place name that you've taken as your last name.

That's right. If you were a commoner, like you said, you would not be Chuck of Atlanta, because I was, I grew up a commoner, because I could make no claim that I ruled Atlanta back in the medieval times or post medieval times. And everyone else would have that name too, in my little neighborhood that didn't have a lot of money, let's say. But you might have a really local name that is more like topographic. Like if your last name is hill or under hill or green, then chances are your distant relatives lived on a hill or on a green or under a hill. I don't know if they were cave dwellers, but those are literally named, there's a name by water. I've never really heard that, but

you know, literally means you live by the water. Yeah, there's some really nice names that have to do with water that serve as last names like Bayshore or Bay Meadow. I think those are very pleasant, but I never really realized that means that their family lived by a bay, by a meadow, I guess, or lived by those last names. Those are very nice last names. And then Chuck, I also realized just now when you were talking that you could have rightly called yourself Chuck the Unpaved Road, right? Sure. That would have definitely placed you there. Yeah, yeah, I grew up on Chuck de Gravel. Yeah, de Via Gravel.

Another locator or I guess topographic, it's sort of along those same lines. If you ever hear anyone with the last name of like Scott or Western, Western is a great example. It's a great last name or the last name Ireland that, you know, those are just very quite literal last names taken because chances are they moved to a different place and maybe that was a different differentiator like they're, you know, that maybe they even called the person from Ireland that moved to a place not in Ireland, Ireland. Right, exactly. They were probably immigrants. You know, they were the Scott who just showed up that everybody liked, you know, the Scott. Oh, okay. Yeah, John Scott. Sure. The Scott. We got to talk school. Right, exactly. It's also like in that movie, Zombie

Land, where everybody's called where they're from. I don't remember that. Yeah, I think, what's his name? Jesse Eisenberg? Isn't that who's in it? Yeah, he's like Columbus and I can't remember what Woody Harrelson, where he's from, Tex maybe or something like that. I don't know. Gotcha. Yeah, I just wanted to give a Zombie Land shout out, you know. It was a good movie. It really was, surprisingly so. Or if you're, I just finished Severance, you just have a last initial, like Mark S or Helly R. What did you think? Well, I just watched it twice because Emily didn't watch it the first go round and I was like, I think you would like this actually. So I watched it all the way through again. So I obviously loved it, but that, boy, that

season finale was just a 45 minute panic attack. It really was. And one of the most unfair cliff hangers in the history of TV. It really was. But really, really good stuff. Love it. So moving on, Chuck, one of the other things we could have adopted as our surnames, if that were a thing like people were still taking new surnames, we could be Josh Podcaster and Chuck Podcaster. Yeah, I mean, I love this one because this is probably the most common way that someone would get a surname. I think more than 10% of English surnames are because of an occupation in your lineage. So, you know, Karen Carpenter, she had someone way back in her family that was a carpenter, probably. Or Earl Weaver had a Weaver in his family and

any Smith, I mean, well, that's not true because there is a thing too where a lot of time immigrants would adopt the name, like one of the most common names when they would immigrate to a country to fit in. So there might be Smiths acquired that way. But if you were a Smith, then you had the last name Smith. Right. Or Clark is a derivative of Clerk, which was at the time not just some pencil pusher, it was a scholarly person who could read and write at a time when most people couldn't read it. Oh, yeah? Yeah. My ancestors was real smart. Thatcher is another example of an occupationally based or shepherd. These are all very obvious, but one kind of cool little, oh, moments is in medieval England, they would use S-T-E-R or X-T-E-R

as a suffix if it was a woman's occupation. Right. So a baker would become Baxter. Or Brewer would become Brewster. That's right. So that holds not just for England, but like if you went to Germany in your last name, Schmidt, it's the same thing as if you were in England in your last name, Smith, because there was somebody in your lineage that was a blacksmith, which is pretty cool. And it was almost like I was saying when that Doomsday book was when it came out. Don't say it. Sure. It was like a snapshot of professions at the time. And apparently within about 300 to 400 years, the use of surnames had solidified enough that it became weird for the tradition of it being weird for us to say, I'm changing my last name to podcaster because it's

my job. That had really kind of solidified. People weren't taking on new surnames. They were getting them passed along. And so professions that came after the 14th and 15th centuries don't usually pop up very often as people's last name. No, but it's funny now that I'm thinking my Instagram handle is Chuck the Podcaster. Chuck the Podcaster. I should change it to D-Aposter if you chucked a podcaster. That'd be pretty fun. I think that's a great idea, Charles. Another fun thing that Ed found was sometimes actors back in the day would sort of with a nod and a wink take a surname of a character that they played a lot. And anyone that knows the origins of the theater knows that actors were, you know, they're not like they are today. They were generally sort of of the lower

class. And so if you, that would like sort of explain away why you might find someone of a lower class, maybe with the last name King or Lord, because they might have been an actor who played a King or a Lord a lot. Yes. And then nicknames play a really big role across cultures. And again, this is kind of what they think the tradition of first names came out of. Like your first name was not necessarily John or Jim or Josh or Chuck or anything like that. Way back in the day, it was probably just the initial differentiator for you, you know, like instead of that guy, no, no, not that guy, that guy, they would say, you know, red or apparently Sherlock means fair-headed. They would also, they would apparently, if you did things with say like your penis,

you might end up with a nickname name like Shakespeare, they think is actually that or Wagstaff. Yeah. They think are actually from, from that kind of lewd toilet humor, lowbrow humor that people used to love in the medieval era. Oh, yeah. I mean, there was, you know, I mean, Shakespeare itself was sort of body, but I took an English class where we did, I took a couple of like, not playwright, well, it did take playwriting, but play reading classes, what would you call that? Yeah, play reading. Drama, they had a better name than that. Sure. And a lot of the plays that we read from the time period that weren't Shakespeare were just toilet humor, blue humor, dirty body humor. It was pretty fun. Yeah. And it's not like that's just gone

anywhere. I mean, I made a Mary with Children reference not 20 minutes ago. So it's still around, although Mary with Children is not around anymore, but you know what I'm saying. But I would posit that like, sophisticated, intelligent humor is a pretty recent invention. You know, I'm sure there are pockets of it here or there. Over time, like Benjamin Franklin had a pretty sharp wit and he was, he was of an intelligent humor. No, you're right. I mean, the first joke was pull my finger. Let's be honest. Right. And that lasted a long time and people use that until that well went dry. But I think it's a fairly recent thing. And I think, you know, I think that's kids introduction to humor is like lowbrow toilet humor.

But I think it's a pretty big marker based on how fast you evolve into intelligent humor. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Like my daughter's, her, the funniest words for her are, or when she's trying to make a joke, like kids don't make really good jokes. No, they don't. They're all, because they're not sophisticated yet, but they sure do like to talk about your, you know, having poop in your hair and stuff like that. You know, it is a pretty good one. And me laughing certainly doesn't help. No, definitely not. Does Emily get mad or does she laugh too? No, she just walks through the room and goes, she got that from you. So she's of your own making.

And I'm like, yeah. You said I actually do have poop in my hair. It's not a joke. And they say pull my finger, Emily. I probably should take back like my little soap box thing condemning toilet and lowbrow humor because it is still kind of funny now that you mentioned it. Yeah, I love it. I mean, I like both. I like a sharp wit and I like a fart joke all at the same time. That Chuck makes you a Renaissance man. All right, good. If you, well, I was trying to tie that into what I was about to say next, but I really couldn't think of a good last name for that. But if you, another very common surname convention is if you were the son or daughter of somebody and if John was your dad, you would be Johnson or Smithson.

Sometimes it was even more basic than that. Like if your name was, it gives the example of someone named Martin and they had a surname George, they might just take the dad's name and be George Martin. Right. And that's typically, especially in Western Europe, in the UK, that's, it took the father's lineage. So it's patronymic is that kind of naming convention. And there is such a thing as matronymic naming conventions. It's just much rarer in our cultures. But it does happen like Marriott means a child of Mary. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it happens from time to time. It's just much less common. But that is a, like you said, it's a very common thing to name, to take a relative's name. And it happens in a

bunch of different ways. And a good example of how different it can be is in Icelandic culture. Yeah, that's pretty cool. If you're a son, say you're the son of Eric, really? Okay. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Your last name would be Eric's son, if you were a son. If you were a daughter, you would be Eric's daughter. So Eric has a son and a daughter, and they're both his son and daughter, but they have two different last names. And the reason why Iceland is not catching fire and people are running all over the place in confusion is because they don't really care as much about last names. Yeah, this is kind of cool because Ed brought up Bjork. And she doesn't just go by Bjork to be like Madonna. Bjork goes by Bjork

because in Icelandic culture, the surname just isn't that big of a deal. And so I looked up her surname. And Bjork's surname is actually, and I'm going to mispronounce this because I have no idea about Icelandic stuff, but it's Goomund's daughter, which is, of course, D-O-T-T-I-R, because her father was Goominder Goonerson. That's a great name, which means that his father was named Gooner. Right. So it's sort of this weird flip as you go back. It's almost like a little puzzle, little Icelandic puzzle. It is. It's pretty cool. And then also in a stroke of awesomeness, Iceland has also come up with a third name for non-binary, gendered people who don't go by son or daughter. They go by Burr. So it'd be Eric Burr.

That's right. And that, you know, that's a thing now with, especially with hyphenations, we'll get to why you might change your name. But, you know, one of the sort of, I feel like it's kind of antiquated, but one of the things that we do here in the West sometimes is a woman who might take her husband's last name or they might hyphenate it. But with, you know, non-binary parents or gay parents, sometimes they will hyphenate their last name, which, you know, apparently can present a little bit of a conflict sometimes in that they're struggle to, I guess, have a non-traditional family, but also sort of try and fit in with a more traditional naming convention. Yeah, which I had never considered. And that's sad that that is even a question,

but it makes sense in a sad kind of way. Go Iceland now, huh? Yeah. And then also, we really shouldn't leave out Arab cultures who use ibn for son of or if the name ibn comes in the middle of the name of ibn or bint is daughter of. And it usually can go back a couple of generations, sometimes three, which explains why there's a lot of ibns or bins followed by other names in somebody's full name from Arab cultures. That's right. Or Ed gives a great example of Saddam Hussein was Saddam Hussein, Abdul Majid al-Tikriti. And Saddam would be the given name there. Hussein would be the father's name. Abdul Majid is grandfather's name. And then al-Tikriti is where he grew up. So that's sort

of a mesh of topographic or not topographic, I guess. What do we call the geographic? Toponymic. Yeah, toponymic. And then the patriarchal and everything's just sort of meshed together and with his grandfather. Right. Well, you want to take another break and then come back and talk more about, I don't know, surnames? Sure. Okay, we're going to do that, everybody. Sit tight. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do,

you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't

look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So one thing we didn't cover with the UK, we got to cover the Macs and the APs. So if you were Irish or Scottish, the prefix Mac would mean son of. So if your name was Dougal and you had a son named John, you would be John MacDougall. Very nice. Or in the case of being from Wales, they use AP to mean son of. So, and this is kind of interesting because it gets truncated along the way. So AP Rice, R-H-Y-S would be son of Rice. But then over time, that gets truncated and the

AP just becomes a P. So the name Price originally can very well, it's hard to say like in all cases obviously, but could have very well been like the son of Rice. Yeah, or Reese. So it could also be the last name, Priese, which everybody's like, that don't sound right. Right. We're going with Price instead. And then Chuck, so we talked a little bit about changing names and there's all sorts of reasons people change names. There's also a lot of reasons people take on names. Again, sometimes it's decreed by law. Apparently, there was a law during the Austro-Hungarian Empire that you needed a last name. And so there was a kind of a custom or a trend, you could almost say, among Jewish people who lived in that area or under Austro-Hungarian rule to kind of take names

from nature, like Tenenbaum or Rosen, meaning fir tree or rose. And that's where a lot of the more common Jewish names come from that have a kind of a Germanic tone to them. And then also, there was a big conundrum or I guess a decision that faced freed enslaved people after the Emancipation Proclamation and then later on Juneteenth, because they didn't actually have surnames at the time, especially if they'd been second, third, fourth, fifth generation American. They might not have a surname at all. That's right. And so in many cases, they were given or sometimes chosen the name of the person who enslaved them, which obviously, as generations went on, that doesn't sit as well. And so a lot of times, if you're African American,

you may change your name later on, like many generations later, to sort of shed yourself of that enslaved name. And then probably the most common reason, especially in the West, that people change their names is through marriage, which has evolved over time. Traditionally, it was the wife took the husband's last name, shed her own maiden name, maybe moved it to her middle name. And then that was it. And then over time, there's just been kind of like this push against just being completely subsumed by their husband's identity. And that introduced the hyphenated last name into Western culture, which again, if you go to Spain, they've been doing that for a very long time. So much so that the children

will actually have both of their parents last names, father's first hyphen, mother's second. And that's been going on. It's called docepulitos. But here in the West, I should say in the United States, because I guess Spain would technically be the West, that's becoming more and more common, but it's still fairly new if you think about it. I mean, I don't remember people hyphenating their names very commonly before like the 80s or 90s, I would say. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it happened, but it seems like it definitely caught on, you know, obviously was sort of in lockstep with the women's liberation movement. Yeah, they called it the flash dance effect. It's something, you know, there's there's no wrong way to do it. People should do what they

want to do. I never wanted or expected Emily to change her name, because she's just she's got a great last name. And that's who she is. And I never, I just thought, I don't know, it seemed outdated to me, but there is no right or wrong way. And eventually years later, I think it was probably lined up when my daughter came along, she ended up going with a hyphenate. And then, you know, our very good friend and friend of the show who played Jerry on the stuff you should know TV show, Lucy, Wainwright Roach, that is a hyphenate because her father is loud and Wainwright, and her mother is Susie Roach. And so she went with a hyphenate. Yeah, apparently there's a famous bass player for Jethro Toll. I had not heard of this dude. Had you, did you know about this?

I had heard of him. I had not. So his first name's Jeffrey. We'll call him that for the moment. But both of his parents had the last name of Hammond. Yeah. They weren't related despite him playing bass for Jethro Toll. And he wanted to honor both of them. So he took the last name Jeffrey Hammond Hammond with a hyphen in between them. Yeah, it's pretty funny. Yep. Good job, Jeffrey. I know, that's pretty great. He's got a great story everywhere he goes. Intelligent humor. That's right. Yeah, you think somebody who went to a Shakespeare play would get that? No. We totally lost on him. One of the myths we can kind of bust, although I'm sure it happened some, was this notion that if you came through Ellis Island, you were just given whatever name the

person had immigration on Ellis Island felt like filling out, or if they wanted to shorten it, they shortened it, or if they want to get rid of some of the hyphens, they got rid of the hyphens. Apparently, I'm sure that did happen some, but ang, I can never say this, anglicizing, you nailed it. Yeah, anglicizing did not happen to the extent that people think it did on Ellis Island, and many times it was the people themselves that New Country, New Start wanted to fit in that would drop the apostrophe from Darcy and stuff like that. Yeah, and I saw that if anything, Ellis Island immigration officers were more prone to actually correct mistakes and spelling errors that some shipping clerk over in Europe had made on the ship's manifest. Most of them spoke

multiple languages and were pretty familiar with what, there's a finite number of last names, and so if you see one with the name misspelled, they probably corrected it. So it's kind of, yeah, it's like the opposite of the myth that you have. Yeah, another thing that people have done to make it maybe just a little bit easier on everybody else and themselves is to, if they have a name that's got a lot of consonants in it, let's say. Yeah, we're looking at Yugoslavic countries. Is to phonetically spell it out, and Ed's like a tease at the beginning. Ed's last name is, we always call him the Grabster, is Grabinowski, and he lives in a region where there are a lot

of Polish people still living there, and he says that he has never seen another Grabinowski, but he does see Grabowskis or Grabskis. Yep. No Grabsters. No, we're trying to make it happen though, aren't we? Yeah, my friend Paul's last name is Wozlo, but it is not spelled W-A-Z-L-O-W. I can't even remember how it's spelled, but it's not intuitive, but he held on to it, and he didn't change it phonetically. Good for Paul. Sticking it to the man Paul's family is. That's right. You got anything else? I'm looking here. Do we have anything else? Not really. Nothing of any great interest if you ask me. No, I think this is good stuff. I think it's cool. People should check it. I'd love to hear some stories from listeners, or maybe do a

little research into your own name and where it might have come from, because there's a lot of interesting stories out there. I'd love to hear more. Yeah, also Chuck, by the way, your last name denotes somebody who used to live by a hill in the Celtic era. Oh, really? Bryant? Yes, derived from Breone. Hill people. Pronounced Breonee in northern France. You're a Frenchie, Chuck. Interesting. Yeah, pretty cool. Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, Datalanta. Well, since Chuck said, ha, ha, ha, of course that means it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this choir math, and I should say that

Lyle here had a lot of consternation after Lyle sent this email about, because Lyle's a math person, and I think a math teacher, about how Lyle chose to express this. So much so that I almost didn't read it, because I didn't want to call Lyle any stress, but I'm going to read it anyway, and this is about the church choir coincidence. When we said one in a million, he said, did you guys calculate that yourself? I'm guessing you repeated it from something else, because unless I'm missing something, one out of one million is crazy wrong using the assumptions you stated for two reasons. Here we go. If there are 15 members and each had a one quarter chance of being late, the probabilities were equal and

independent, so it was like rolling 15 four-sided dice, that would be roughly a one in a billion chance. And number two, point two, even the calculation in one completely fails to capture what you seem to want to express, the chance of something like this happening, i.e. the simultaneous choir lateness coinciding with the explosion, that would be trickier to work out. The simplest way to calculate it would be to decide on the chance of a 1915 Nebraska church blowing up on a given night and multiply that by the one in a billion chance above. So basically, it sounds like we did half of the equation and didn't even do that half right. No, that sounds like us. So he says, you know, did churches blow up often in 1915 Nebraska?

But see, you could also say a building blowing up. Sure. Or a building killing somebody. Like, I don't know where you draw the line, because I'm not a math person, or how you would quantify that. I would think you'd need to go with churches just to compare apples to apples. And then also, you know, not every building is going to invite people into it at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday night or something. Good point. A lot of factors. And then Lyle actually goes on to to say it's easy to get overly dazzled doing calculations like these. And I think that's what we are now is overly dazzled. I'm dazzled. The more specifically you describe any event or collection of events, the more astronomically

unlikely it becomes, i.e. the chance of my spaghetti being in this exact configuration or mind bogglingly low. It's a pretty amazing story still. And that is from Lyle. That is classic Lyle. Always slipping a spaghetti reference into his emails, you know? Yeah, that is interesting to think about though. Like, depending on how far you want to drill down, you can, you know, it gets a little nutty. Totally. But I like his calculations even better than ours. One in a million chance. Kind of dazzling. One in a billion chance. And that's just step one. That's, I got stars in my eyes, basically. Wowie, wow. Well, thanks a lot, Lyle. I'm sorry for driving you a little bit crazy. We are glad that you could take the time to explain

to us what we got wrong and not call us stupid in the bargain. Thank you. If you want to be like Lyle and get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.