| Frank Grains |
Many riders have surnames that are also nouns. I apologise if this ruins your TV viewing, those once exotic Euro names can actually prove a bit dull but here are some more of the peloton’s names translated from their home language into English:
Borut Bozic – Borut Christmas
Diego Caccia – Diego Hunting
Francesco Chicchi – Francesco Grains (of rice)
Oscar Freire – Oscar Fry
Roger Kluge – Roger Wise
Bjorn Leukemans – Bjorn Niceman
Krzysztof Szczawinski – Krzysztof Sorrel
Fabian Wegmann – Fabian Awayman
What’s in a name – Part I
What’s in a name – Part II
What’s in a name – Part III
What’s in a name – Part IV
What’s in a name – Part V
What’s in a name – Part VI
What’s in a name – Part VII
Splendid stuff. If ever you do one giving the translation the other way, best leave out Mick Rogers 🙂
Wegmann, at least the way it is pronounced it is more likely to deviate from Der Weg == the way/path/road/route than from weg == away
Anonymous, that's sort of what I meant, as in the man who is away. It can also mean "far away", as in the man from a long way away?
Anyway, it's not a precise translation, more a guide to the etymology of the names.
tIR: I'm no etymologist but I bet it deviates from some medieval German accent and probably has nothing to do with "weg". But we are doing this for fun and if one takes this literally for me as a native speaker a "Wegmann" is either somebody who lives at the road/path/route(bear in mind it's origin must be from the middle ages there weren't that many roads of importance back then as there are nowerdays and it isn't as unspecific as it sounds nowerdays) or somebody who is in charge of collecting "Wegmauth" or "Wegegeld" (==toll) on that road/route. It could, though imo higly unlikely, also be another form for "Wegelagerer" == highwayman/footpad.
The main point is "Der Weg" the "e" is pronounced like the "a" in "hate" while in "weg" the "e" is pronounced like in "heck" and Wegmann the "e" is pronounced like in "der Weg".
I personally would translate it as "toll attendant", that is a nice thing about the German language it is to some extend possible to combine nouns and create new words, but if you want to keep it literally I'd Road- or Pathman.
Arashiro 新城: new castle
German Anonymous: I know what you mean. I used to speak almost fluent German after spending a year there but it's pretty rusty now. I like your idea and will update the thing above. If anything it could be "Road man", no?
Japanese Anonymous: thanks, that's great. I'll put it in the next edition.
Freire was an archaic honorific style once given to friars in Iberia, and this would seem to be the most straightforward origin of the surname. Fry (‘fritar’) is quite different phonetically, I do not see how they could be connected. Anyway, all this is good fun!