Unit 11 Personal Names

Objectives 1. To get to know the language of the text. 2. To understand the history of American names. 3. To learn translating skills and do translation

exercises. 4. To improve understanding and translating abilities.

Procedures

1. Reading skill

2. Fast reading

3. Text

4. Exercise

5. Translation

Reading Skills

Finding out Word MeaningsTwo Categories:

1.Guessing meaning according to word-building.

2.Guessing word meaning according to the context.

I. Reading skills

taking use of prefix and suffix to guess the meaning of the new words

1.1. Guessing meaning according to Guessing meaning according to word-buildingword-building

Example

Unreadable —— un- read- able 可猜出词义为难读的，难以理解的

Example

Prefix: non- nonessential 非本质的；不重要的 nonmedical 非医学的 un- unwary 不小心的 unaccompanied 无人陪伴的 deca- decameter 十米 decaliter 十升

Example

Suffix:

-ish reddish 微红的 yellowish 稍黄的 -like needle-like 针状的 glass-like 似玻璃的 -sion precision 精密度 -ure mixture 混合

I. Reading skills

Word Formation ware: articles of the same kind or material; usually

used in combination :---+ware n.software hardware silverware tinwarespecialist: an expert who is devoted to one

occupation or branch of learning eg: He is a plastic surgery specialist. racist, geologist, psychologist, archeologist,

+age= n. : 1. the action or result of doing sth.

blockage shrinkage breakage bondage 2. the cost of doing sth.postage 3. the particular state or rankpeerage hostage

+like= adj. : typical of , or suitable to something

sharklike jelly-like ladylike childlike

un+=adj./ adv. 1. shows a negative, a lack, or an opposite; not

unclear unhappy unfair unfortunate

un+=verb. shows an oppositeundress ---- to take your clothes off

unburden

Fast Reading

Reading practice Finish the three reading passages in 10

minutes (150 words per minute) Apply the reading skills to your reading.

Check the keys

Fast Reading 1: c a b d dFast Reading 2: a c c d aFast Reading 3: c c d d b

The Text

Given Name

Middle Name

Family Name

Barack Hussein ObamaBarack Hussein Obama

About the Author

George Rippey Stewart (May 31, 1895 – August 22, 1980) an American toponymist, a novelist, and a

professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

His 1959 book Pickett's Charge, a detailed history of the final attack at Gettysburg, was called "essential for an understanding of the Battle of Gettysburg".[

Born in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, Stewart was the son of an engineer who designed gasworks and electric railways (but who later became an orange "rancher" in Southern California). The younger Stewart earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1917, an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in English literature from Columbia University in 1922. He accepted a position in the English department at Berkeley in 1923.[2]

Stewart : a founding member of the American Name Society in 1956-57

: served as an expert witness in a murder trial as a specialist in family names.

His best-known academic work is Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States (1945; reprinted, New York Review Books, 2008).

He wrote three other books on names: A Concise Dictionary of American Place-Names (1970), Names on the Globe (1975), and American Given Names (1979).

His scholarly works on the poetic meter of ballads (published under the name George R. Stewart, Jr.), beginning with his 1922 Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia, remain important in their field.

Novelist

He is best known for his only science fiction novel Earth Abides(1949), a post-apocalyptic novel, for which he won the first International Fantasy Award in 1951.

It was dramatized on radio's Escape and served as an inspiration for Stephen King's The Stand, as King has stated.

His 1941 novel Storm, featuring as its protagonist a Pacific storm called "Maria," prompted the National Weather Service to use personal names to designate storms and inspired Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe to write the song "They Call the Wind Maria" for their 1951 musical Paint Your Wagon.

Storm was dramatized as A Storm Called Maria on a 1959 episode of ABC's Disneyland. Another novel, Fire (1948), and an historical work, Ordeal by Hunger (1936), also evoked environmental catastrophes.

The Origin of Given names

Given Name

Hebrew NamesCeltic Names

Germanic Names

Slavic Names

Latin Names

Greek Names

The Origin of Family Names

Family Name

OccupationsPatronymics

Personal Characteristics

Geographical Features

Patronal

Place Names

Comprehension Questions

Read the text and answer the following questions:

Do you know the principal source of tradition for naming habits among Americans?

How did the Indians and Blacks come by their family names?

Why did immigrants take Americanized names?

American naming habits ( Family name)

Influenced by English tradition How the Indians& Negroes came by their family

names Why the immigrants take Americanized names Various ways American found to produce new

names

American naming habits (Given name)

Early naming patterns in history

Americanized naming development in the puritan colony of New England

Name of Indians

Features: single ,long, detailed in description

Once converted ,take baptismal or Christian name as given name ,old name as family name

Trend :simplified ,become common

Example: Talking crow John Talking crow

Night walker James knight walker

Names of Negroes

Negroes Originally had no family name (be deprived by some rights as human ;live in small communities; be distinguished by other names )

After freedom, they still tended to adopt commonplace names

Example: Brown\ Smith \Jones

Creative process of producing names

Absorbd the foreign names (mainly from French &Germany)Joachim Yokum Lovoie Lovewear By Shorten long foreign names Calogropoulos Caloyer Kalliokowski Kallio Nieninen Nieni Translated or taken over by sound and partly translated

Zimerman Carpenter Jaeger hunterBreitman Brightman

Early pattern of Given name in history

Influenced by English tradition

Example: John &Thomas came from Bible

William, Henry, Richard ,Robert ---- popularized in England by Norman Conquers

American naming development in puritan colonies of New England

names were strongly influenced by Bible (especially the Old Testament)

Evidence: Boys who were born in Boston from 1640 to 1699 names rank

John, Samuel, Joseph, Thomas, Nathaniel, Benjamin, James, Jonathan, William, and Richard

American naming development in puritan colonies of New England

Girls’ name rank in 17th century:

Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, Hannah, Abigail, Rebecca,

Ruth, Lydia, Anna, and Martha

For female names ,more of them were no longer traditional ,but biblical and “meaningful” with abstract qualities

Such Names as :

Patience \ Thankful \ Mercy\ Charity \ Hope \Grace \ Desire ,etc were popular

Language Points and Translating

1. In an anthropological account of any tribe, the manner of its giving of personal names is often thought of sufficient importance or inclusion, and so we may fittingly attempt an appraisal of such habits among the Americans. Appraisal: an act of assessing

n. 评价；估价（尤指估价财产，以便征税）；估计 . e.g. She made a thorough appraisal.

在任何民族的人类学研究中，取名的习俗往往非常重要，而且包含许多内容。因此，我们可以对美国人的取名习俗作一番研究。

2. The old theory that he took the name of his master seems to have little foundation, as is evidenced by the failure of the names of the great slave-holding families to be very common among Negroes.Note the use of 'as' in the sentence.e.g. It's one of those things as people used to know much about.

过去的理论认为黑人用的是自己主人的姓，这似乎站不住脚。因为拥有大量奴隶的家族的姓并没有成为黑人中的常见姓。

3. Sometimes this has resulted from a desire to escape from a real or fancied stigma of association with a foreign background.

Stigma: here refers to a mark of disgrace;耻辱；污名；烙印；特征

e.g. To be a non-reader carries a social stigma.

有时是想摆脱外国背景的耻辱，这种耻辱或者是现实存在的，或者只存在于想象中。

4. On the other hand, this levelling process has failed to eliminate very many names, and the number of names in Great Britain or any other country. Levelling: here means removing the disparity.

使同等；对准；弄平 e.g. level the rich and the poor.

同时，这种拉平的过程并没有使大量的姓消失，也没有减少英国或其他国家姓的数量。

5. The total number of family names in this country has been the subject of a careful study by Elsdon C. Smith, for his Story of Our Names.

艾尔斯顿 C. 史密斯在《名字的故事》一书中，仔细地研究了美国姓氏的总数。

英语中被动语态的句子往往翻译成汉语主动句。被动语态译法

将英语原文中 by, in, for 等做状语的介词短语翻译成译文的主语在此情况下 , 英语原文中的主语一般被翻译成宾语 : 例 1. A right kind of fuel is needed for an atomic reactor. 原子反应堆需要一种合适的燃料。 例 2. By the end of the war, 800 people had been saved by the

organization, but at a cost of 200 Belgian and French lives. 大战结束时 , 这个组织拯救了八百人 , 但那是以二百多比利时人

和法国人的生命为代价的。 例 3. And it is imagined by many that the operations of the

common mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special training. (93 年考题 )

许多人认为 , 普通人的思维活动根本无法与科学家的思维过程相比 , 而且认为这些思维过程必须经过某种专门的训练才能掌握。

Homework

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