my name

An interesting thing I've just found; a strong case for the origin of my name!!  First, a word from old christian reading...

"Jephthah: whom God sets free, or the breaker through, a "mighty man of valour" who delivered Israel from the oppression of the Ammonites (Judg. 11:1-33), and judged Israel six years (12:7). He has been described as "a wild, daring, Gilead mountaineer, a sort of warrior Elijah."

So, if you're familiar with rules of pronunciation, you could easily see how Jephthah can turn into Jeftha... which I've seen LOTS of in South African phonebooks (that's where my people are from, dontcha know) and gravestones, as both first and last names.  A little bit more stepping-on by the colonizers, and an 'S' appears.  Voila!

The biblical connection is really interesting; it has often seemed interesting to me how black people in places where white people brought them (or chose to stick their noses) often enough adopt biblical names for their children... you might think about that, in the context of the colonization of a people, and the mollification of a pool of labour.

Now further research has me suspecting that the Jeftha name has a strong Friesian heritage!  The Friesians could be referred to as the 'Newfies of The Netherlands'; that portion of that country's population that is somewhat rural, and so ends up becoming the butt of jokes.  Every place seems to have one of these unfortunately so-selected groups (Appalachians, Surrey for Vancouver, Langford for Victoria, etc), so it's interesting that these people may have left Holland for South Africa, eh?   Interesting to me, at any rate.

Learning about my name has been an interesting occasional diversion of mine for a long time.  I am usually the only person with this surname in any place I am living!   And now, it seems I've got a bit better grip on where another side of 'My People' come from.

Never mind that Alexander 'interpreted' means 'protector of man'; the name itself is derived from Persia (and Greece, and Egypt), other spellings can be Iksander, Iskandr, Lixandru, Александр, اسكندر...