Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'Onomastics'.
Found 1 result
-
There are no two spelling variants in America that give me more trouble than Greenberg vs. Greenburg, and people with these names get *indignant* if you spell them wrong! This is, I would think, Ashkenazi in origin, and using my limited knowledge of Russian, I think the "u" would be the most likely letter (*); however, it's often "whatever the guy at Ellis Island decided it would be." Is there an easy way to "know" if someone's name is Greenburg vs. Greenberg? Take Mark Furstenberg as an example - I've written his name probably 100 times before, and I have to look it up *every single time*. Just now, I wrote someone a letter about Greenberg Smoked Turkeys, and got that one wrong, too - I guess my natural inclination is to use a "u" because of Russian. Does anyone have any suggestions, advice, or pearls of wisdom that might keep me from looking this up each-and-every time I use it? "Ask them" or "look it up" are both inadequate answers. (*) Then again ... even in Cyrillic, the "e" is used for her name (**). And then there's Strasbourg, France, which should be pronounced slightly differently, but never is. (**) Yeah, I know, who the hell is Maria Grinberg, but there are a lot of worse ways you could spend the next ten minutes of your life.
