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