Lanaii and Google

I grew up with a name that no one could pronounce. My mother and father each were partially to blame. My father was in the US Navy in the Pacific during World War II. He remembered the name of an island in Hawaii that he believed was spelled Lanaii. However in the 1940s and still today, that island is spelled Lanai.

My father believed that Lanai was pronounced like Hawaii but with the letter L in the place of H and the letter n in place of the w. My mother, it seems didn't like the pronunciation of the name that my father proposed and chose to make the double i’s sound like the vowel y. So when people see my name in print and try to pronounce it, they rarely pronounce it correctly. I tell people that my name is pronounced like René with an L.

When my mother and father were having the dispute over how my name should be pronounced, very few people in the Midwest had been to Hawaii. Amongst my parents' relatives, there were none to dispute my mother's pronunciation. So at the start of each year school year, I faced a teacher who had no clue as to how to pronounce my name. One embarrassing moment was the first day in my science class of junior high school (now called middle school).

Mr. Hayda apparently had a class roster that was written in cursive writing. Many people in the area in which I lived were of German descent, so I think that my teacher assumed that the two dotted letters were the letter U with an umlaut. So when he called my name, he pronounced it with a u sound and said my name as Lanow. After that, Peter Hauschild called me Lanow the cow.

After my family moved to California, my teachers didn’t seem to have a problem with attempting to pronounce my name. Houses being built in Southern California often were advertised as having a lanai. At that time, typically Hawaiian houses were built with a lanai, or as mainlanders would call it, a veranda. Unfortunately for me, the structure called a lanai on new houses was a patio. So when teachers first called my name, they pronounced it like the Hawaiian word lanai. After that a few kids called me patio. Within a year or so, the kids had become more mature.

A lanai (veranda) and the island of Lanai are not pronounced the same. And, neither is pronounced the way that my name is pronounced. Hey! The spelling looks the same, but that is because we look at the spelling from an English language point of view and ignore the subtleties of the Hawaiian language.

Lanai, the veranda, is pronounced la-nī (short a, long i). Lanai, the island, is pronounced La-na-ee (short a, long e). Over the last several years, I found that the island of Lanai was often written as Lana’i to distinguish it from a veranda, the lanai.

I periodically do a Google search on my name to see what Google finds. The Google search-process knows about the island, Lanai, as well as the structure, lanai. Google assumes that I made a typo when I enter Lanaii but allows me to say that I mean to search for Lanaii and not for Lanai. The search results are interesting.

When my father was in Hawaii, very few mainlander Americans had been in the Hawaiian Islands. So I was not surprised that my dad and mom together created both the spelling and the pronunciation of my name. It wasn’t until 1990 that the island was opened to tourism with the building of the first resort hotel. Until then, the island was primarily used for growing pineapples and access to the island was limited.

When the results of my search on Google appeared, I was very surprised at the number of hits that were about the island of Lanai but spelled Lanaii. Some of the hits contained the word Lanai’i. It would appear that the Hawaiians have been successful in getting mainlanders to pronounce the name of the island correctly. However, it also appears that people are making the same mistake that my dad made years ago.

What's in a name?

Many immigrants to the United States modify their surnames after they arrive. And in some cases they even change their given name. In most instances, immigrants change names to make them sound more American. I saw this tendency in practice as early as the late 1660s in New York following the British take over of the Dutch colony.

I found the names spelled one way in the records of the Dutch Reformed Church and another way in the English civic records. For example, the Dutch names Teunis, Jacobus, Aefje and Engeltje were written, respectively, as Anthony, James, Eva and Angelica in the English records. The spelling of surnames also evolved as the colonists moved from one colony to the next. Most of the changes in the spelling of surnames in America came about because names were spelled phonetically.

As each wave of immigrants came to America, immigrants modified both the first and last name if it sounded too foreign. My grandmother's father and grandparents came from Norway. In Norway, the family was known as the following: Martin Semmingsen, Mari Amundsdatter, Andreas Martinson, Kari Martinsdatter and Karl Person. Within a few years of their arrival, they were called Martin Simonson, Mary Simonson, Andrew Simonson, Karen Peterson and Charley Peterson, respectively.

Sometimes immigrants would change their name because it was too hard for Americans to pronounce. After years of people mispronouncing his name, a friend of mine named Ashok shortened his first name to Ash. I see this practice extensively with the Vietnamese immigrants. Although most have not Americanized the surnname other than to spell it using the English alphabet, many Vietnamese immigrants have Americanized the given name.

My husband's ancestors came to the United States from Eastern Europe. Unlike my great-great grandfather who made his Norwegian name sound more American, my husband's ancestors in two instances changed the name all together. One side of his family changed the name from Moswz to Klaine, while another side changed the name from Sluszny to Ehrlich. We recently met a second cousin who had some inkling of how that name evolved.

Historically, most names, both first and last, have a meaning. Just do a Google or Yahoo search on your name and there is a very high likelihood that you will find the meaning and derivation of your name. Jack told us that Sluszny and Ehrlich mean the same thing, honest or honorable.

I spent a little time on Google and found that Ehrlich, a German name, does indeed mean honest or honorable. Sluszny, a Polish name, means correct. I happened to come across a similar name used in the Czech Republic, Slušný, that means proper, decent or correct. So I can perhaps see how my husband's grandfather and great uncle got Ehrlich from Sluszny. At this time, I do not know why the two of them changed their surname to a German version.

As I explained the result of my research to my husband, he told me that he could see why someone would like a surname that means honorable. He reminded me that we address judges and Congress people by the title, Honorable. As much as I can see why we would call a judge, the Honorable Judge so-and-so, I am not sure why we should give such a title to many of the people who hold political office.

Howard University

Today I was arbitrating the results of two indexers who indexed the same image from the North Carolina Freedmen Letters 1862-1870. A name mentioned in almost every letter was Major General O. O. Howard, Commissioner. I decided to find out a bit more about this man.

O. O. Howard is Oliver Otis Howard who was born November 8, 1830, He was a career US army officer. However, the reason that his name appeared so often in the letters was that he was commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau. The bureau's purpose was to integrate the freed slaves into a free society.

I knew that many black college students attended Howard University and assumed that the university was founded by a member or members of the black community. When I was researching about who Oliver Howard was, I learned that he was the founder of Howard University. Howard University was founded in 1867. The university was open to both females and males and didn't judge an applicant based on color.

Nearly thirty years later, he established Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee to provide for the education of the "mountain whites."

School Experience as A Baby Boomer

I was talking the other day to a woman at my gym who was concerned about moving and the impact on her teenage son. She was worried that he would have trouble meeting friends because her son is very shy. I told her that I faced a similar situation when my husband took a job in the San Francisco area, but I knew that my son would make friends based on my own experience.

As a student, I went to two elementary schools, two junior high (middle) schools, two high schools and two universities. At each change, I met new friends from the members of my class. And as I predicted, my son found friends at his new school and has maintained that connection beyond his high school graduation.

You may think that I attended all of these schools because my family moved a lot. You would then be incorrect. I was a part of the baby boom that occurred after World War II. The number of children that were born in the years following the war strained the public school system. Communities were faced with having to build more schools to accommodate the dramatic increase in children of school age.

I started kindergarten at Adair Avenue Elementary School. I don't have much recollection of my time at the school. I remember being in kindergarten and sitting on the floor while the teacher read us a story. I also remember coloring pussy willows with colored chalk and having to have a nap on a mat in a darkened room. First grade also left me with few memories.

I fell off the schoolbus regularly when we arrived at the school to the point that I had bandages on my knees on a regular basis and had scars on my knees for many years later. As it turns out I needed glasses. By first grade, we were starting to read. I had learned to read before I was in kindergarten because my mother was a former school teacher. But this was the first time that I was asked to read from the blackboard. So that year I ended up with eye glasses.

My brother had started kindergarten that year but was at New Hope School. This school had been a one-room school in what was a rural part of the county. It was scheduled to be demolished but was temporarily saved by the urgent need of a place to house kindergarten students. Adair Avenue kindergarten was full.

The next year, I was to begin my second grade. My 1st grade brother and kindergarten brother all started at Noble Avenue Elementary School. The construction on the school was not completed until after the school year began. The focus was on completing the classrooms and then finishing the remaining facilities within the building.

I was in the morning kindergarten class so was home by lunch time, but I had lunch in the school cafeteria when I was in 1st grade. In the early months of second grade, we had to bring our lunch and we ate lunch in our classroom. Before I ended my time in second grade, we had a cafeteria. It was at Noble Avenue School that I first experienced the multi-purpose room.

Noble Avenue School was my home from second through sixth grade. However, as I was about to enter junior high school, the school district needed to build another junior high school. I ended up at the new school rather than the school that I had expected to attend. This time most of my class from Noble Avenue were in the same school with me but I was placed into a special program at the school. The students in this program were kept separated from the other new junior high students. There were 72 of us divided into two homerooms. Since we came from several elementary schools, I found myself in a homeroom with about a quarter of the students I already knew.

My parents then moved us to California. I attended O A Peters Intermediate School. I made some friends, some of whom ended up at the same high school with me. The end of that year, my parents bought a house that was in the same school district but would place me in another high school, This was the school from which I graduated.

During my time in high school, the district was building a 5th high school and had created a contest to name the 5th school. A few years after I graduated from high school, the district lines were redrawn so that my younger siblings ended up at another high school than the one from which I graduated.

Years later, many of the schools were closed because there were not enough students. But the one thing that I learned from my years as a student is that you will meet friends.

Cordboards

My sister, brother and I donated one of the three cordboards that my mother owned to the Tustin (California) Museum in late 2008. The museum asked me if I could send them something about the history of this particular cordboard being in Orange County, California. However, events in my life caused a delay in a reponse. In October 2009, I sent the following email message to the museum:

I meant to send you a blurb about the cordboard that I donated to the museum last year but other events superceded my time.

 

My mother started an answering service at 1212 Sycamore Street in Santa Ana in 1968. She had been a supervisor at Orange County Answering Service that was located at the corner of Bush and 10th Street in Santa Ana. She was frustrated with the quality of service that her employer was willing to provide to its clients so she started her own business. Her sister who was an operator at Orange County Answering Service was my mother's first employee.

 

At the time that my mother started her business, Pacific Telephone leased the cordboards and provided maintenance support. The cordboard that I donated was one of three that my mother leased from PacTel. These cordboards were not new in 1968 and seemed to have been manufactured in the late 1940s. At some point PacBell did not want to support this type of cordboard. My mother ended up owning the three cordboards and the maintenance costs.

 

I came across a picture of my father's mother taken in 1910. She was sitting at a cordboard in the parlor of her parents' home. My great grandfather provided phone service to a small community in Anoka County, Minnesota. My Grandma was answering phones for 24 customers, but the picture did not look much different from a photo that I have of my mother in front of a cordboard with 100 slots. My mother met my father because she was one of the two teachers at a 2-room schoolhouse built on my grandmother's parents' property.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cordboard that I donated was in operation until 2006. This is a picture of my mother in the early years of her answering service.

 

 

After I sent the information above to the museum, I received an email message that told me the following:

The cordboard you donated does attract a lot of attention since it appears that almost everyone "of a certain age" has a PBX story!  (Including myself since I operated one in the 60s).

Note: PacBell and PacTel are the same company. The named changed as the telephone company monopolies were required to break up into smaller entities.



 

 

Do You Have Relatives or Ancestors Enumerated in A Canadian Census?

Although you may have been born in the United States as were your parents and your grandparents, you might find that you have relatives or ancestors that lived in Canada. The Canadian census images that are currently available for viewing will then be of interest to you.

I have looked at hundreds of US census images. This data is not always reliable as I found on more than one occasion that the age of the same person from one census to another are not always 10 years apart. One of my relatives was less than ten years older in the next census to the point that she was almost the same age in one census as she was 30 years before.

However, as you come across records and find that you have a year's difference in the birth year of a relative who lived in Canada and in the United States, it may be due to the difference between the meaning of the age recorded in a census between the US Census and the Canadian Census.

The instructions to the enumerator of the US census has been since the 1850 census to record the age of the individual at his/her last birthday. I looked at so many US census images that I assumed that the age in the Canadian census was the age at the last birthday. I was wrong!!!

When you find a relative in a Canadian census, do not assume that the age is the age at the last birthday. You will be wrong as was I. After enough times that I found a relative in a Canadian census whose age was a year older than I expected, I decided to look at what that data meant. A little research revealed that the age in the Canadian census is the age at the next birthday.

If you are looking at census images for countries other than the United States, be sure to understand what each data point means. Do not assume that you know.

2347 Prospect Street, Berkeley, California

About a year ago, I visited the house in which I lived when I was a student at the University of California. It had turned into a Co-op and was a shell of its former beauty. When I was living in the house, it was well kept. The girls residing in the house were expected to participate in the upkeep. We washed dishes, set the tables, polished the silver, etc.

Recently, I thought about the house and wondered what had happened to it between the time I lived in it and when I visited it. My search for information led me back to the period before I lived there. I remember that I was told the house was built around 1904-1906 and had been donated to the university by Phoebe Apperson Hearst (by whom I don't recall). Since Mrs. Hearst gave large contributions to the University of California and was a strong supporter of women students, I believed what I was told. I distinctly remember knowing that the silver that I polished belonged to Mrs. Hearst.

As I searched for more information about the house, I became suspicious about Mrs. Hearst's connection to the house. I learned that the house was built in 1906 but have not discovered who had it built. However, based on an academic paper written by Professor Frederick Parker Gay, he was living at that address in 1913. Who's Who in Berkeley 1917 has an entry on page 87 for Dr. Gay stating that he was a professor of Pathology at Cal since 1910.

I came across a page at the University of California website about the centennial celebration and history of the university. The page included information about women's living groups and made reference to Beaudelaire Club. 2347 Prospect St. (Formerly Al Khalail (women's club), Chi Sigma Phi sorority, and the residence of Professor Fredrick P. Gay.) 1950.

Professor Gay was living at 2347 Prospect Street in Berkeley according to the Polk-Husted Directory Company's Oakland-Berkeley-Alameda City Directory of 1923. I found an "In Memoriam" in the New England Journal of Medicine that said he was at Columbia University from 1923 until his death on July 14, 1939 in New York City.

I then found a paper written by Michael A. Green (Class of 1962) entitled "A Brief History of UC Berkeley Greek System." Enewah Incorporated 1913-1914 became Al Khalail and Al Khalail 1914-1927 became Chi Sigma Phi, a local sorority. Chi Sigma Phi closed in 1934 (page 39).

Based on various directories and Blue and Gold yearbooks, Al Khalail Women's House was  between 1919 and 1925 at 2736 Haste Street in Berkeley. In 1915 Al Khalail was at 2536 College Avenue. Thus, it seems that Al Khalail moved to 2347 Prospect Street after 1925. Then in 1927, the house at 2347 Prospect Street became the residence of a local sorority, Chi Sigma Phi. However, Chi Sigma Phi dissoved in 1934.

I have no idea who owned the house after Chi Sigma Phi closed in 1934. The first indication that I had of the existence of Beaudelaire Club was 1943. The Bancroft Library at Cal has a folder (27) from the Women's Dormitory Association Records of 1935 to 1965. This folder contains the "Minutes of the Beaudelaire Club 1943."

Because of the riots at Cal, my mother said that I could not stay at Cal. Under duress, I transferred to UCLA. When I transferred, I could not find university housing. I rented an apartment just off campus with another female. By the next year, no one wanted to live in university housing. This time was probably the beginning of the end for the grandeur of the house at 2347 Prospect Street.

I remember reading somewhere that the house was occupied by Naval midshipmen. That would have been brief as the military was not held in high regard by university students at that time. The Blue and Gold yearbook of 1978 indicated that the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity was living at 2347 Prospect.

If you do a Google search for this address, you will find hits that refer to the house as a house with an African flare. It think that Phoebe Apperson Hearst had she donated that house to the University would be rolling over in her grave to see it today. But then, maybe not.

Mrs. Hearst died in 1919. I still wonder about that silver I polished.