Swiatocha

[pychicot]

Hello all,

Does anyone know how to pronouce this name?

Swiatocha

Is this some kind of Easten European name..?
I searched on the net, but got no hits.

Any suggestion will be appriciated.

Thanks in advance

Keiko Kurihara

[Kirill Sereda]

My guess would be ??????, but I need more contextual info to be sure.

Kirill

[Kirill Sereda]

Silly me, always expecting Japanese-enabled encoding from members of a Japanese language-related list...

スヴャトシャ

The word makes sense if the syllable "-cha" is interpreted as "シャ", but not if interpreted as "チャ".

[Alan Siegrist]

Keiko Kurihara writes:

> Does anyone know how to pronouce this name?
>
> Swiatocha
>
> Is this some kind of Easten European name..?

The name Swiatocha appears to be of Polish origin. See:
http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/swiatocha.html

This map appears to show the distribution of the surname Swiatocha on a map
of Poland.

I do not speak Polish and do not know how to pronounce Polish names
properly. The person with this name may pronounce it in the Polish fashion
if they live in Poland, or they could be a Polish-American descendant of
Polish ancestors, for example, and in this case, they may pronounce their
name in an Anglicized fashion.

Knowing where the person lives may help us determine how they pronounce
their name.

Regards,

Alan Siegrist
Carmel, CA, USA

[Alan Siegrist]

I wrote:

> > Swiatocha
> >
> > Is this some kind of Easten European name..?
>
> The name Swiatocha appears to be of Polish origin. See:
> http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/swiatocha.html
>
> This map appears to show the distribution of the surname Swiatocha on a
> map of Poland.

I guess the first letter of the Polish surname Swiatocha should be properly
written with an accented S (Ś), so searching upon this same Polish map with
the spelling Światocha gives a much broader distribution, as follows:
http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/%25C5%259Bwiatocha.html

Perhaps the correct spelling is Światocha if written properly in Polish.

I am not really sure, but upon listening to the pronunciation of some Polish
words that start with "świa" it appears that the accent on the ś changes the
pronunciation from "s" to "sh" and so "świa" is pronounced more like "shve"
in English.

[Marc Adler]

2009/11/1 Alan Siegrist <AlanFS...@comcast.net>

 

 

I guess the first letter of the Polish surname Swiatocha should be properly
written with an accented S (Ś), so searching upon this same Polish map with
the spelling Światocha gives a much broader distribution, as follows:
http://www.moikrewni.pl/mapa/kompletny/%25C5%259Bwiatocha.html

Perhaps the correct spelling is Światocha if written properly in Polish.

If the person is a Pole, then シヴャトーハ or　シビャトーハ would be my guess. If the person is American, then you can't really guess how they would pronounce it, making transliteration more problematic.

--
Marc Adler
www.adlerpacific.com
nirebloga.wordpress.com
mudawwanatii.wordpress.com
blogsheli.wordpress.com

[Hirai]

Keiko Kurihara asks:

> Does anyone know how to pronouce this name?
>
> Swiatocha
>

I believe the closest katakana rendering is
シフィォントハ

Note that "S" here is actually "Ś" and "a" here is
"ą." "Świąt" means "world" in Polish.

Do widzienia,

M. Hirai 091102
Email: mjh...@beige.ocn.ne.jp
URL: http://www.hirai-language.com

[Marc Adler]

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Hirai <mjh...@beige.ocn.ne.jp> wrote:

Note that "S" here is actually "Ś" and "a" here is
"ą." "Świąt" means "world" in Polish.

I've looked around some Polish websites, and I haven't found any that uses the ą in this name.

Pan mówi po-polsku?

[Karen Sandness]

Yes, if the diacritics are as M. Hirai suggests, then the
pronunciation would be シフィォントハ。I don't speak Polish,
but I had to learn to pronounce it when I sang in a group that
specialized in Eastern European folk music.

Polkally yours,
Karen Sandness

[Alan Siegrist]

Hirai writes:

 

> Note that "S" here is actually "Ś" and "a" here is  "ą." "Świąt" means "world" in Polish.

 

As far as I can tell, these are two different Polish words:

 

Świąt: means “holiday” as in “Wesołych Świąt” = Happy Holidays (Merry Christmas or Happy Easter)

 

Świat: means “world” as in “Ulica Nowy Świat” = New World Street in Warsaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowy_%C5%9Awiat_Street

 

The name in question appears to be written Światocha (no ą).

 

I don’t know what the name means.

[Susan Mast]

Światocha is not a Polish name that I'm familiar with, and -ocha is not a
common ending for a Polish surname, but it seems there are Polish people
named Światocha. I also found a reference on a Polish website to someone
with that surname from Belarus.

If it is a Polish name, the /w/ would be devoiced after voiceless /Ś/, so it
would be シフャトーハ.

I lived in Poland during Communist times, teaching English just after
college... już sporo lat temu.

Susan Mast

[pychicot]

Thank you for a lot of replies.

シフャトーハ
シフィオントハ
シヴァトーハ
スヴィヤトシャ

sounds hard to pronounce.

These helped me a lot. I appreciated it.
Thanks again.

[Carl Freire]

Hard to pronounce yes, and you should take careful note of Marc
Adler's aside that if the person in question is Polish-American then
all bets are off on how that person may choose to pronounce his or
her name (or the pronunciation that was foisted off on that person's
ancestors at Ellis Island).

Carl Freire
whose Spanish surname is properly pronounced "Fray-ray," with rolled "r"s,
whose Lithuanian-American mother decided "Fray-eerie" was somehow
more pronounceable,
who irritatingly is frequently is called "Fryer" or "Freer" by people
who even more irritatingly think the surname is German or possibly
French (nothing against the Germans or the French, mind you),
and who is most pleased when he meets Brazilians because it's a
common surname there and they never miss.
--

**********

Carl Freire
cfreire /[@]* ix.netcom.com
Tokyo, Japan

[Krzysztof Łesyk]

Darn, one thread on Honyaku I could actually contribute to, being a
Pole, and of course I miss it ;)

Anyway, the name does sound like an archaic Polish one (something from
an old legend perhaps). In Polish it indeed would be written with an
"Ś" (in IPA represented by ɕ - hopefully it shows right).
Unfortunately I'm not skilled enough in IPA to provide the correct
notation of how it would be pronounced in Poland, but in katakana, シフャト
ハ is probably as close as you can get (with "ya" in "fya" pronounced
similarly to the one in "kya"). A brief search of Polish webpages
shows that Światocha now appears mostly as a surname - in which case
one needs to be careful, since a genitive of another surname,
Światoch, will look identical (of course this should be pretty easy to
check, based on the context).

I think all other information was already provided by my colleagues.
Hope this helps!

Regards,
Krzysztof Łesyk, whose name is also a mouthful ;)

[Hirai]

Alan writes:

 

Hirai writes:

 

> >Note that "S" here is actually "Ś" and "a" here is  "ą." "Świąt" means "world" in Polish.

 

> As far as I can tell, these are two different Polish words:

 

> Świąt: means “holiday” as in “Wesołych Świąt” = Happy Holidays (Merry Christmas or Happy Easter)

 

> Świat: means “world” as in “Ulica Nowy Świat” = New World Street in Warsaw

 

 

I have just come back from work to find a few responses to my

hasty posting. Alan is correct, and I have to back down.

It's "świat," not "świąt," that means the "world." Therefore,

the most probable katakana rendering is シフィァトハ.

 

Memory-failingly yours,

 

M. Hirai  091102
mjh...@beige.ocn.ne.jp
Tylko słabo mowię po polsku.