Family surnames often derive from occupations, locations, or physical characteristics, so Quiz Guy John Chaneski has crafted a puzzle about fictitious origins of people’s last names. For example, many folks have farmers in their ancestry, but what...
Onomastics is the study of the origin and history of proper names. Many family names, such as Smith and Cook derive from occupations. That poses a conundrum for Marina Abbott from Sonoma, California: If abbots traditionally took a vow of celibacy...
Anastasia in Marquette, Michigan, is reading a lot of Russian literature from the late 18th and early 19th century, and keeps getting confused by naming conventions in that language. That naming system is often a challenge for non-Russian speakers...
Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a name game for famous folks who could use a different surname because of their trade. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “New Famous Surnames Quiz” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about...
Someone should write a love letter to a new book called Letters of Note. It’s a splendid collection of all kinds of correspondence through the ages: Elvis Presley fans writing to the president, children making suggestions to famous cartoonists, a...
We all lead busy lives—so are speed reading courses a good idea? Plus, if you hear someone speaking with a British accent, do you tend to assume they’re somehow more intelligent? And some common English surnames tell us stories about life in the...
