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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
 Posted - 11/20/2007 : 02:28:49 AM
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I have been reading about laws that were passed in Hawai`i in the late 1850's that required an English first name and a surname from the father's line for all new babies born thereafter. I was wondering on this since surnames did not seem to be an original part of the Hawaiian culture.
Does anyone have any reference materials I could read on how the surnames were determined? And how did that integrate with the other people living in Hawai`i at that time? The Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, etc. I have also read that if some great shame happened to a family that many times they would change their surname so no one would know about the family's shame. And then what happened when someone was hanai'ed? Did they take the surname of the hanai family or keep the surname from their original parents? I have read about legal records prior to that time having a person's one and only name and you could not tell if with was female or male, so in the legal records they would parentethically show (k) or (w) for kane or wahine.
I am wondering, too, if some of the surnames didn't get hacked up by the haoles doing the record keeping just because the sound of the names was so unfamiliar to them I do know, for instance, when folks from Europe immigrated to the US, at Ellis Island, just about any kind of spelling could have been made for the unfamiliar names or completely changed by a clerk because he didn't "like" the name of the immigrant and he would shorten it or simplify to make his job "easier".
Usually European surnames speak of either where you are from like Messina; who your father was (Johnson); your field of work (Potter, Smith, Carpenter, Chandler) or a phsyical attribute (Short, Long, Redman). The that same sort of convention hold true when determining Hawaiian surnames? I have read that the difficulty with surnames in Hawai`i has made it very difficult to do genealogical research.
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Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2168 Posts |
Posted - 11/21/2007 : 04:30:24 AM
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| Surnames in Europe were popularized for taxation purposes, among others. |
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Hula Rider
Lokahi
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - 12/09/2007 : 5:15:52 PM
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Aloha - If you e-mail me I can send you some links. For some reason, I can post but not use any of the other functions here.
Malama pono,
Leilehua |
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