雅思阅读第100套P1-Family Names
Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage One.
Family Names
Any specific study of words andlanguage almost invariably has an obscure name, and that includes the study ofpeople’s names themselves. This science is called anthroponomastics (anthroposbeing man, and onoma being name) but do not expect that word to be useful inyour life. Yet all people possess names, and most possess several. With respectto the apparently random family name, if one traces back far enough in time,there is inevitably a formative logic that warrants some reflection. After all,that is the name people will carry their whole lives (name changes aside), andpass on to their descendants.
Considering early Britain,populations at that time lived in small farming hamlets, where they generallystayed their whole lives, and people had one name only. Being the only personnamed 'John’ in the village allowed that single name to sufficiently distinguishthat person from all others. If another John did exist, one could simply addsome description to the name: 'John the carpenter’ versus 'John near the hill’,and a third could be 'John, Peter’s son’. Such additions were mostlyshort-lived and not passed down to descendants. But of course, life was notdestined to remain that simple.
With townships increasing inpopulation, people becoming more mobile, and invading armies flowing to andfro, complications set in. In England, the process of adopting family names (or'surnames’ or 'second names’) did not happen suddenly, but if one had to pick afixed date, 1379 would be a good start. This was when the government introduceda poll tax, the administration of which required a list of the names of everyadult in the kingdom. Suddenly, there were too many Johns to deal with. Toresolve this issue, the later Additions Statute (1413) insisted that all namesalso come with the bearers’ occupation and place of residence. With suchincreasing bureaucracy, fixed and heritable family names would eventuallybecome a necessity.
There were many methods bywhich these names were decided. The most obvious was to use that place ofresidence, although this method did come with the obvious problem that allresidents of, say, Wickham, could not take the family name 'Wickham’ withoutcausing obvious confusion. Still, jumping to Italy, this did not preventLeonardo da Vinci (from Vinci) becoming the town’s most famous export. Movingback to England, family names could also derive from personal beliefs(resulting in Mope, Christian, Godley, and others) or physical attributes,giving us Armstrong, Short, Brown, and others. Such names are often disguisedby their original Gaelic derivation. Guilfoyle means 'follower of (Saint) Paul’;Kennedy means 'ugly head’.
Quite common also was to benamed from the trade or profession carried out, resulting in names such asSmith, Butcher, and Carpenter. Many of these refer to professions long maderedundant, such as Fletcher (arrow maker), Cooper (barrel maker), or Heyward(fence maintainer). Also common was to be named from geographic features, oftenones near where the name-bearer lived. And so there is Hill, Bush, Underwood('under the wood’), Eastlake, Bridges, and many others. Finally, names oftenshowed the relationships among families, where 'son of Peter’ became 'Peter’sson’, in turn becoming 'Peterson’. Similarly, there is Johnson, Harrison, andRobertson. In Scots, 'Mac’ was used, giving MacDonald, MacPherson, and others.
With the mixing of populationsfrom different countries (especially in America), the original foreign namesoften suffered. This was either due to mispronunciation, which saw names suchas Pfoersching become Pershing, or deliberate modifications to accommodateEnglish pronunciation and spelling. Thus, Krankheit became Cronkite, andWistinghausen became Westinghouse. Yet even the most English of family names isoften historically knocked around a fair bit in terms of spelling andpronunciation before settling into its final form. Old English spellings, forexample, were often lost in favour of phonetic intelligibility, making thedetermination of exact meaning difficult. .
All this study of family namesmight lead one to believe that using them is universal. Far from it, and thetechnical word for a single name only is a mononym. Parts of Africa, India,Central Asia, and Indonesia, as well as many indigenous or aboriginal groupsuse single names only. In the developed world, such names are usually stagenames, reserved for celebrities, artists, singers, or film stars. Theentertainment industry in Japan is replete with examples: Mana, Ayaka, andIchiro, while Korea, China, and Hong Kong, have followed suit. Moving to theWest, some will invent names (Bono, Sting, Prince), or just use family names(Liberace, Morrisey), or their first names (Shakira, Cher). Contrasting this,the musician Bjork uses a mononym in accordance with her own culture. As withall Icelanders, she has no family name.
A final point of interest isthat in European and Western cultures, the family name is usually given afterthe first name (in both speaking and writing) — hence the terms 'first’ and'last’ name. Contrasting this, in Asian cultures it is the other way round,reflecting the greater emphasis placed on family relationships. Since many ofthese cultures have vertical writing, what to the West is a 'last name’ is inthe East, an'upper name’.
SECTION 1: QUESTIONS 1-13
Questions 1-4
Answer the questions.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWOWORDS from the passage for each answer.
What aspect of family namesshould make us think more about them?
1 _________________
Originally, what was needed todistinguish two same first names?
2 _________________
What legislation began theprocess of using family names?
3 _________________
What made family names, intime, necessary?
4 _________________
Questions 5-9
Write the correct letter, A—F,next to the questions.
What system was used for theformation of the following names?
A
Personal belief
B
Place of residence
C
Mistake
D
Mononym
E
Profession
F
Geographic feature
5 ____________Bono
6 ____________da Vinci
7 ____________Pershing
8 ____________Heyward
9 ____________Guilfoyle
Questions 10-13
Complete the sentences.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWOWORDS from the passage for each answer.
'Mac’ in Scottish means '10 '_________________
In order to be easier to write,foreign names often had 11_________________
Spelling changes in names canmake it hard to know their 12_________________
The term 'upper name’ is usedbecause of Asia’s 13_________________
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雅思阅读第100套P1-Family Nameshttp://www.tuonindefu.com/?p=2744雅思阅读第100套P1:Family Names
