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[Surname] Re: Suffix/Prefix List
a question: what is hypochoristic?and further: the Tom-, Tor- and Tot- (dutch) i don't recognize, can you give an example? (i'm dutch, you see)exte should be etxe i guessand to add: #-er# in especially German surnames can mean "habitation", like Leipheimer is from Leipheim and Luttenberger is from Luttenberg, etc.oh, and -ma in Frisian means its patronymic, at least according to Meertens Instituut. See, mainly it is connected with first names, but later on they started to connect it even with placenames and professions, but when you see a Frisian surname with ending in #-ma#, it is often preceded by a first name.
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Sorry, it should have been hypocoristic, just a convoluted way of saying a pet name. But I should have added that -ma was a patronymic ending, I was just looking it up a minute before hand. They say in the book mentioned below that -ma is hypocoristic and means "man" but that confuses me a little. This is an old list, I should have checked it before I posted that. : (Hmm, the Tot, Tor, Tom thing, I will have to look up where I found that...wait a minute...
I will have to quote for the best explanation:
"The preposition 'tot', corresponding to the High German 'zu' is also found fused in the dialect forms 'Ter, Tor, Ten & Tom'. These are shared with Low German surnames from the Rhineland". - under Dutch surnames in Oxford University's 'A Dictionary of Surnames'.And yes, exte should have been etxe. : )---------------------------------------
770555
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aha, i found some examples at the Meertens Instituut of that: Tombrink as related to Ten Brink.and #-ma# does mean "man".
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