That was interesting, Charles. I've bookmarked it. I went thru them all and with some the origins are easy to figure out.....others not so easy. Didn't the Dutch pronounce their W like V same as the Germans?? Maureen ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. Frank" <frank3@localnet.com> To: <nywestch@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 4:52 PM Subject: [NYWESTCH] Dirckje > Guess every guess is good on this. > http://www.hopefarm.com/dutchnam.htm > Other sites list all the others. > Chas. > *************************************** > Have you checked out the Westchester County GenWeb site yet? > http://www.rootsweb.com/~nywestch/ > *************************************** > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > NYWESTCH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Maureen asked if the Dutch pronounce their W like a V as the Germans do. On another mailing list, someone had written that the sounds were not identical in the two languages. I have a Dutch friend named Willem who was a teacher, so I asked him that same question a few years ago. Their pronunciation is as a VW, he said. To say the English letter V, as in veal, we start a 'hum' then push the bottom lip away from the teeth while saying an EE sound. The V can come in front of other vowels as in vat or vine. To make the VW sound you should pick a vowel sound to use with it. To say Will as VWill, you would put your teeth on the top of your bottom lip and start to 'hum' the first part of the V sound. Then push the lips away from the teeth while saying a WI sound. A few years ago I spent a lot of time writing a webpage on how Americans would pronounce Dutch words, especially names. Although I can pronounce German rather well, I do not know Dutch pronunciation. At various times, I asked four Dutch speaking people to pronounce some words for me. I could not put on paper what I was hearing, so I abandoned the project when it was about 95% complete. I thought it would be useful for genealogists to realize that Catarina, Catharina, Cataryna, and Catherine would have all been pronounced the same by a Dutch person (COT-uh-REE-nuh), and therefore they could be thought of as all the same name when sorting through records looking for an ancestor. The early spelling variations were frequently created by the person writing down the name, and what was written depended on that person's education and primary language (English, Dutch, German). The Albany area of New York State was settled by the Dutch in the early 1600s. Surprisingly, Dutch was still spoken in many Albany homes after 1800, and business was still conducted in Dutch in 1800, although I think that government business was entirely in English. The Dutch language did not survive as long in Westchester County. Albany was much more isolated from New York City where the English had the greatest influence. Albany's isolation was due to the fact that there were no roads between the cities for a very long time. Traffic and trade was by sail boat which was impossible in Winter and slow during the other seasons. The portion of the Hudson River between the cities is tidal, which causes the water to travel toward NYC part of the day (falling tide), then flow back toward Albany later (rising tide). It is not like a normal river where you could expect the flow to take the boat downstream. The back flow toward Albany is a real benefit when sailing in that direction, of course. The isolation meant that the Dutch language could flourish in the Albany area. The Reformed church records were in Dutch for a long time. Reformed church sermons were in Dutch even after 1800 in Albany. In 1815 in two Reformed Churches in Albany, there was a need for two sermons each Sunday, one in Dutch and one in English. For genealogical research in the Albany area, it would be helpful to know how the Dutch pronounced names. For example, if an English woman married a Dutch man and got married in a Reformed Church, her name could be spelled in a Dutch way in the marriage register, but the pronunciation of the name would be the same for the Dutch writer/scribe as it was for the English woman. Spelling differences may not be as important as they first seem. Cliff Lamere