Not sure if you read these, but first time long time, etc. Have been a fan of your work for many years.
Now for an unnecessarily detailed post about the Poitier name. When something touches my area of expertise (no matter how en passant), I seize the day.
Basically, it's very unlikely the name Poitier in the Bahamas has anything to do with Haiti. And William the Conqueror probably didn't bring any Poitiers to England with him either.
Based on a brief survey, few or no Poitiers show up in English baptismal records before 1700. That’s unlikely verging on impossible if the name had survived since the Norman conquest, or even—given the likely workaday origins of the name, meaning "potter"—from later Francophone immigration in the days England and much of France shared a king.
Plus, I suspect you’re right that a Norman name would have been mangled by the time it got to the Bahamas. Witness the difficulty colonists had with French immigrants named Durrier or Consilier (from whom we have Duryeas and Conselyeas). Though we can partially blame those on the Dutch, to whom we also owe the enduringly strange name “Rapalje,” from a Walloon named something like “Rapareillet.” So “Poitier” would probably have ended up spelled Pwotyea or pronounced Poyters.
But since it was not a Norman name, the Anglo-Bahamanian slaveowner Charles Poiter could very plausibly have pronounced it in the French fashion.
And if he did, he was probably the source of the name. When English slavery was abolished in 1834, his estate owned 152(!) people, and his wife owned dozens more, many of which were on Cat Island, Sidney Poitier’s ancestral home. 152+ people in 1834 is a lot of exponential growth over 200 years, and we could expect a ton of Poitiers living today. 1 or 2 Haitian refugees would not give us nearly the same numbers. And indeed, there were 125 Poitiers born in the Bahamas between 1850-1891 alone. I imagine the name is all over the islands now.
So, while the Haitian hypothesis is more romantic, Charles Poitier has Occam’s Razor on his side. He was probably of relatively recent French Protestant extraction. Many Huguenots came to England and Ireland between about 1600 and 1800. The famous Martineau clan, for example, came in the 1680s and has managed to cling to the correct spelling and roughly correct pronunciation of their name ever since.
Guinier is another very interesting name. Prof. Ewart Guinier was born to Jamaican parents. But there’s little evidence of the name “Guinier” existing in Jamaica before the very late 1800s. Before that, Guinier’s own ancestors seem to have gone by “Gaynair.” And while the name “Guinier” understandably suggests French origins, to me it seems more likely that the Gaynairs took their name from a family of slaveholding Gayners. Their plantation was not far outside Montego Bay, the home of the Guiniers/Gaynairs.
I’d bet there are many similar stories. All things being equal, people seem to prefer to French forebears. Especially people from former English colonies, and not just the “colonized.” An undertheorized topic, as Tyler Cowen might say.
At the end of the third segment (on “y,” “u,” and “v”), I expected Dr. McWhorter to mention that English speakers (or was it German?) invented the letter “w” to clear up some of the “u/v” ambiguities (specifically, the semivowel function)…and the oddity that we CALL this new letter “double-u,” but its FORM is a double v.
I think I heard you request questions we have about certain words for you. How about the use of "calculus" instead of calculation. "He changed his calculus..." Or, "what is his calculus on this situation?" Drives me nuts.
Ai Yah! Joe Morton was nominated for a Tony for his work in Raisin. But I remember him better from the movies The Brother from Another Planet and Terminator 2.
Etymology question: bread and roti (ie, flat bread from India) sure sound like they’re derived from the same Indo-Germanic root. Not true?
Ward is the one being protected. The protector is a guardian. Same root though as you explained.
Thanks!
Not sure if you read these, but first time long time, etc. Have been a fan of your work for many years.
Now for an unnecessarily detailed post about the Poitier name. When something touches my area of expertise (no matter how en passant), I seize the day.
Basically, it's very unlikely the name Poitier in the Bahamas has anything to do with Haiti. And William the Conqueror probably didn't bring any Poitiers to England with him either.
Based on a brief survey, few or no Poitiers show up in English baptismal records before 1700. That’s unlikely verging on impossible if the name had survived since the Norman conquest, or even—given the likely workaday origins of the name, meaning "potter"—from later Francophone immigration in the days England and much of France shared a king.
Plus, I suspect you’re right that a Norman name would have been mangled by the time it got to the Bahamas. Witness the difficulty colonists had with French immigrants named Durrier or Consilier (from whom we have Duryeas and Conselyeas). Though we can partially blame those on the Dutch, to whom we also owe the enduringly strange name “Rapalje,” from a Walloon named something like “Rapareillet.” So “Poitier” would probably have ended up spelled Pwotyea or pronounced Poyters.
But since it was not a Norman name, the Anglo-Bahamanian slaveowner Charles Poiter could very plausibly have pronounced it in the French fashion.
And if he did, he was probably the source of the name. When English slavery was abolished in 1834, his estate owned 152(!) people, and his wife owned dozens more, many of which were on Cat Island, Sidney Poitier’s ancestral home. 152+ people in 1834 is a lot of exponential growth over 200 years, and we could expect a ton of Poitiers living today. 1 or 2 Haitian refugees would not give us nearly the same numbers. And indeed, there were 125 Poitiers born in the Bahamas between 1850-1891 alone. I imagine the name is all over the islands now.
So, while the Haitian hypothesis is more romantic, Charles Poitier has Occam’s Razor on his side. He was probably of relatively recent French Protestant extraction. Many Huguenots came to England and Ireland between about 1600 and 1800. The famous Martineau clan, for example, came in the 1680s and has managed to cling to the correct spelling and roughly correct pronunciation of their name ever since.
Guinier is another very interesting name. Prof. Ewart Guinier was born to Jamaican parents. But there’s little evidence of the name “Guinier” existing in Jamaica before the very late 1800s. Before that, Guinier’s own ancestors seem to have gone by “Gaynair.” And while the name “Guinier” understandably suggests French origins, to me it seems more likely that the Gaynairs took their name from a family of slaveholding Gayners. Their plantation was not far outside Montego Bay, the home of the Guiniers/Gaynairs.
I’d bet there are many similar stories. All things being equal, people seem to prefer to French forebears. Especially people from former English colonies, and not just the “colonized.” An undertheorized topic, as Tyler Cowen might say.
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/moderna-starts-testing-mrna-hiv-vaccine-and-excision-launches-crispr-trial-for-virus-months?oly_enc_id=7898C3371567C2B
Scroll down to the first paragraph. Is “confuddled” even a word? Does it mean when a long list of scientists are befuddled together?
At the end of the third segment (on “y,” “u,” and “v”), I expected Dr. McWhorter to mention that English speakers (or was it German?) invented the letter “w” to clear up some of the “u/v” ambiguities (specifically, the semivowel function)…and the oddity that we CALL this new letter “double-u,” but its FORM is a double v.
I think I heard you request questions we have about certain words for you. How about the use of "calculus" instead of calculation. "He changed his calculus..." Or, "what is his calculus on this situation?" Drives me nuts.
Ai Yah! Joe Morton was nominated for a Tony for his work in Raisin. But I remember him better from the movies The Brother from Another Planet and Terminator 2.
Etymology question: bread and roti (ie, flat bread from India) sure sound like they’re derived from the same Indo-Germanic root. Not true?