...and why do I always think of "trainwreck" when I see that name?

Sorry, just curious.

Hey mate, in the best possible spirit. You could be a little more respectful of our host.
You wouldn't like it if we all went questioning your name on a public forum, would you?

Though why it matters is beyond me.
Well anyways, if you would, just tell us what it is.

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No no and no

+1

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

American!

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Sorry if I offended anyone. I'm just curious as it's not a common name.

Me? Mine is Polish. Urbaniak-like the jazz violinist. If my name reminds you of something go ahead and ask. I won't be offended no matter how far out there your association goes.

Hmm. In 0.09 seconds Google told me that Traweek is a British name - which is news to me. The suggestion is that it is a variation of Trawick, which is also not a very common name hereabouts.

I'm not at all sure that information is reliable, and I'll be interested if Brad has anything to add to - or completely contradict - it.

On the other hand, this might not encourage him to bother:

Dunno. You'll have to answer that for yourself. It doesn't have that effect on me.

Cheers - C

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Mine is Vulcan.

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You dig?

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The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

More (following from my previous post - talk about giving a dog a bone!).

I don't care much about genealogy but I am interested in the linguistic aspects of this kind of thing. Turning it over in my head I'm seeing three possibilities.

If Traweek is indeed a British name it might be a variant of Trawick (as previously suggested). Very many British surnames in the distant past came either from people's occupations or from where they lived. -wick is a common place name element, deriving from wic, the Anglo-Saxon word for a farm. So the possibility would be that a village or town grew up around a farm settled in the middle of the first millenium with a name along the lines of Treowic - Tree Farm. Much later someone coming from that settlement took it as a family name.

The problem with all of that is that there is nowhere called Trawick anywhere in the British Isles. (Nowhere called Traweek, either.)

A second possibility is that Traweek is a variant of Traywick, a Cornish surname (from the far South-West of England). Many Cornish names end in -ick, such as Trevethick and Petherick.

That's a better sounding theory, because it would suggest the name might have travelled to the US quite early on, say in the 18th or early 19th century, when Cornish seafarers were getting around a bit, and also when many others in the mining industry moved about the world. And indeed, as far as I can see Traweek seems to have arrived in America around that time.

A third option is that Traweek isn't British at all, and is in fact a variant of (say) an East European family name, and merely arrived in Britain at around the same time as it did in North America.

Huh. Now I hope Brad ignores the tone of the first post and looks in to tell us anything he might know!

Cheers - C

EDIT: spelling.

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Yep, I'd rather be anywhere rather than Cornwall too.

[EDIT]

The nun in my signature picture is actually Cornish, from the Penzance Nunnery.

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Amazing coincidence: I've met her. She lives in Cornwall but told me she actually comes from Grantham. I found it believable - the eyepatch is a dead giveaway.

Cheers - C

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My surname(Belbin) originates from Dorset and Devon in England but is directly descended from one of the first Knights Templar-Auguste Balbayne.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

Nah can't be from Grantham. The use of eyeglasses indicates the ability to read.

And her knuckles don't drag on the floor.

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Hi guitslinger: when I was ten we moved from London to Devon for six years. The head teacher at my first school in Devon was called Mr Belbin. So there ya go!

My surname (for the few here who know it) looks like an ordinary English word. But it in fact comes from a Danish dynastic name datable at least back to the fifth century when a lot of people were arriving in Britain from Scandinavia. And that might not be a coincidence, because as part of a national archaeological project my DNA was tested and found to contain a Scandinavian marker, probably from that period. I'm a pre-Viking! (Maybe.)



She said she couldn't read. She just used the glasses to hold the patch in place. She showed me underneath that patch. EW! [Shudder]

Cheers - C

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My last name is Small, but that was changed when my family became citizens back in 1962, the day John Glenn went up in Friendship 7 to be the first American to orbit the earth.
My father's original name was Szlamkowicz; he was from Lodz Poland, as was my mother. We used to joke around that he changed it because none of us could spell it

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Current Gear: Ron Kirn Barnbuster Tele,
Marshall: 1971 SuperLead 100>1997 1960-TV, bunch of pedals
and a 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera coupe named Veronica