From: mbottorff@lshelby.com   
      
   Brian M. Scott  wrote:   
      
   > > Dude. That is one awesome name. Boom as a surname?   
   >   
   > It means 'tree'.   
      
   Is there a connection between that and the nautical term, or is it pure   
   coincidence?   
      
   >   
   > > But add the rest? Dirk Van Dem Boom.   
   >   
   > And  is 'of/from the tree'.   
      
   Making it roughly equivalent to the french Dubois?   
      
   ...   
   In the one I'm planning on setting in an alternate Ohio circa 1800, I   
   was thinking that I would have my protagonist call new-world   
   francophones Daybwahs*, because the only ones he has ever met were   
   loggers come up the Mississippi/Ohio in search of big pines for masts.   
      
   My hero's father came to Ohio via Canada--but in my alternate timeline,   
   Canada was settled by the Germans, not the French, and Detroit is called   
   something different.   
      
   (My hero's father was actually Scandinavian, but I haven't figured out   
   from which part of Scandinavia yet -- which is part of the reason my   
   hero has not been named.  Maybe I'll go for him somethingly relatively   
   generic like Daniel Erikson, and then never specify what his father's   
   original nationality was.)   
      
   *from "homme(s) des bois".   
      
   --   
   Michelle Bottorff -> Chelle B. -> Shelby   
   L. Shelby, Writer  http://www.lshelby.com/   
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)