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The Atlas of Languages

Bernard Comrie and Stephen Matthews and Maria Polinsky

Comrie, Bernard; Stephen Matthews; Maria Polinsky;

The Atlas of Languages

Facts on File / Quarto 1996

ISBN 0816033889

topics: |  language | atlas | reference


Relation between names and language typology:
SOV lgs:  Surname comes first:
KIM Il-Sung
MATSUMOTO Tada
YAMATA Sensei
WATANABE Ishi

VSO lgs: son/daughter-of - comes earlier
    Mac- as in MacAllister  : Son of Alistair (Scots)
    O- as in O'Hara		: Son of Hara (Irish)
    Ben- as in Ben-Gurion	: "Son of Gurion" (Hebrew)

In SOV lgs from Caucasus, "son of X"
   -ian as in Khachaturian (Armenian)
   -shvili as in Basilashvili (Georgian)

Many Indo-European lgs show a similar order, which may be a relic
of earlier SOV order:

   -ova' as in Gruberova' : Gruber's daughter (Czech)
   -dottir, Sigurdstottir : Sigurd's dtr (Icelandic)
   -son, Anderson	       : Anders' son (Norwegian)

English names like Johnson are of Norse origin


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at] gmail.com) 17 Feb 2009