The Kiernander
surname is a rare one, and it has always been so. Seldom recognised in everyday encounters, it usually
elicits an exasperated, “How do you spell
that?”, or “Where’s that from?”. The apparent simplicity of these two
questions belies their thorny nature; for although Kiernander is not an ancient name it does have a tangled history.
"Where's
that from?"
There was a
time when the name Kiernander was well-known both in Britain and in India. In the nineteenth century, not a year went by
without reference being made in print to the first Protestant missionary to
Bengal, companion of Clive and Hastings, the Rev. Johann Zachariah
Kiernander. At this time in Calcutta it
was not unknown for children to be christened with Kiernander as a middle name in
memory of the great man. His name lived
on in that city until relatively recent times through his legacy of charitable
institutions: the church, schools, hospital, almshouses, and the cemetery
commonly called “Mr. Kiernander’s burial ground”.
For two
hundred years Calcutta was home to most of his descendants. Thacker’s Indian Directory charts the growth
of the family, and the proliferation of their name; at the end of the
nineteenth century Calcutta cradled a population of Kiernanders yet unsurpassed
by any other city – though this probably numbered no more than fifty
individuals at any one time. The
inter-war period, and then Partition, saw a great migration of his namesakes
out of India to the various reaches of the British Empire, and beyond. As the twenty-first century dawns the name is
most densely concentrated in the English speaking nations of the United
Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.
Although associated
principally with Calcutta, Kiernander is not Bengali in origin. When in 2011 I met the UK correspondent for Die Welt, Thomas Kielinger, I was
surprised both that he was quite familiar with the name, and that he believed
it to be “a classical Indian
name”. I can only think that he had
stumbled upon it in some subcontinental context, and that it had remained with
him by reason of its similarity to Kielinger.
Perhaps he had misconstrued some link to the Punjabi surnames Anand or
Nanda, or to Vivekananda even; I’ve known many desis make the same mistake.
Kiernander is, in fact, a Scandinavian surname that emerged in
seventeenth century Sweden.
How do you
spell that?
The earliest
proven paternal progenitor of the Kiernanders is one Sveno Laurentii (c.1580-1613). He was an influential kyrokherde, or priest, who may have been the first Lutheran
clergyman to the parish of Åsbo, in Östergötland, Sweden. In Scandinavia at this time surnames, i.e. hereditary names common to all
members of a family, were relatively unknown.
Instead, there was a system of patronymics,
or compound names conveying paternal lineage.
If farmer Lars had a son, the child’s last name would be Larsson,
meaning “son of Lars”; if Lars had a daughter, her last name would be Larsdotter,
meaning “daughter of Lars”. It was not until approximately a century ago that
this practice ended and the patronymic stabilised into a surname, and whole
families of Larssons, Andersons and Johannsons emerged.
Sveno
Laurentii is, in fact, the Latinised version of the name Sven Larsson. Before Sweden’s Lutheran Reformation,
clergymen used only their Christian name preceded by the title Herr, meaning “Sir”; for instance, Sveno
Laurentii’s predecessor at Åsbo was one “her Pauell”, or Herr Paullus. Soon, however, it became necessary to
differentiate between clerics with the same Christian name, and so the patronymic
was added, albeit in a Latinised form: an Abraham Andersson became Abrahamus Andrex, a Björn Bengtsson
became Bero Benedicti, and one Sven
Larsson became our Sveno Laurentii.
From the
clerical records gathered in Håhl’s Linköpings
stifts herdaminne (1847) we learn that Sveno Laurentii had a son (perhaps,
among other children). This son was
named Johannes Svenonis Kaliander, and served as komminister to his father at Åsbo from 1609-1614, before succeeding
him as kyrkoherde there from 1614-1637. If Johannes
is a Latinised version of the name Johan, and Svenonis a Latinised patronymic from Sven, then what are the
origins and meaning of this last name Kaliander? And how is it related to the surviving
surname Kiernander?
To further distinguish
themselves, clerical students in seventeenth century Sweden created additional
names commensurate with their social station.
One popular method, out of which the name Kaliander sprang, was the use of the suffix
–ander, which derived from ἀνδρός – or andros, the Greek word for man.
Another example is that of Johannes Nicolai Eosander, who followed
Johannes Svenonis Kaliander as kyrkoherde
at Åsbo from 1638-1661. Similarly, there
is the recent fictional Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, whose surname would
have originated similarly. The origin of
the prefix Kali- in Kaliander is less
clear, but will be explored later.
In one source yet
another name is applied to Johannis Svenonis; he is referred to as Jonam Johannis Ostrogothium. The last is a locative name, deriving from
the province of Östergötland, where he was born. The same name is also applied to one of his
three sons, Sven (1618-1674), also born at Åsbo in Östergötland, who is referred
to as both Sveno Johannes Kaliander Öster
Götus, and Sveno Johannes Ostrogothus. Even Johann Zachariah Kiernander, born in the
same province almost a century later, is noted as Ostro-Gothia
Swecus in records at the University of Uppsala.
In 1642, Johannis
Svenonis’s son, Sven, travelled to the city of Åbo (Turku) in the eastern half
of the Kingdom of Sweden, which covered most of present-day Finland. There he studied at the famed Åbo Akademi,
before settling in that city as a lawyer.
In the university records we find no less than twenty variations of his
name. While his Christian name is
written as Suen, Sueno, Sven, Sveno, Svenonis, Swen, and Sweno, his patronymic middle name is
sometimes Johannes, and sometimes Hansson, though more often than not it
is absent altogether. It is at this
point that we see the emergence of a family name, or surname, and the disuse of
patronymics.
In some
sources Johannes Svenonis’s last name is written Kalliander rather than Kaliander,
but in these university records the variations for his son Sven’s last name are
astounding. Along with Kaliander and Kalliander, there is Kaliandri,
Kaliandrj, Kaliandro, Caliander, Calijander, Calliander, Coliander, Collijander, as well as the more
familiar Kernander. Thus, in one place he can be referred to as Sven Kernander and in another as Swen Hansson Collijander. This is indicative of the absence in earlier centuries of any standardised
spelling, and of what little importance was attached by
our forebears to the spelling of even their own names. Most famous, perhaps, is the case of William Shakespeare, that most literate of men, who is known to have spelt his name with almost no consistency.
Another son of
Johannes Svenonis was Jonas Joannis (c.1612-1662) who was komminister to his father at Åsbo from 1633-1639, and who, like his
brother, was given his father’s last name Kaliander. This, however, he seems to have adapted, while
studying at Uppsala between 1626-1629, adopting the spelling Kernander and,
perhaps, even Kiernander. Records show
his initial use of Kaliander, before assuming Kernander, but it is quite likely
that the spelling Kiernander has been applied to him only retrospectively. Jonas Joannis’s two documented sons were
Israel Kernander (1644-1718), a priest in the tradition of his forefathers, and
Jöns Kiernander (c.1662-1740), an oxdrivare,
or drover, and soldier, whose two sons were Carl Gustaf Kjernander (1709-1769)
and Johann Zachariah Kjernander (1711-1799).
Åsbo Kyrka as it is today. |
Without a
detailed knowledge of Swedish pronunciation in the seventeenth century, and the
linguistic developments which no doubt took place, it is difficult to ascertain
how these names were pronounced.
Similarly, it is unknown what phonetic relation they bore to each other,
or to the present pronunciation of Kiernander.
Spelling was still not standardised, though by this time it seems individials
often favoured one or two spellings, rather than a multitude. Israel Kernander, Jöns Kiernander and Carl
Gustaf Kjernander appear to have hardly deviated from these spellings of their
names.
Thomas's Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography and Mythology, 1887 |
Johann
Zachariah Kjernander was the exception.
In the 1924 edition of Nordisk
Familjebok, his surname is given as Kjernander, but the entry is followed
by the assertion “skref sig Kiernander”, or “he wrote it Kiernander”. Indeed, in letters written by him to Clive of
India, he signs his name Kiernander. No
examples of him spelling it otherwise have yet come to light, but it is unlikely
that he deviated from the present spelling after entering the English speaking
world in 1735. Kjernander remains quite
unsayable in English, whereas Kiernander is perfectly manageable. It seems that in Swedish the pronunciation of
Kjernander would be Sherr-nander, and
not much like the modern name Kiernander, which is pronounced /kiːrˈnændə/. After Johann Zachariah’s adoption of the Kiernander
spelling the surname has undergone no further changes. This is essentially due to the fact that
spelling has become almost universally standardised, and that the name has
remained predominantly within the English speaking world.
The origin of
the prefixes Kali-, Kalli-, Ker-, Kjer-, and Kier- are purely hypothetical at
present. In the text Skrifter av Eric Wennæsius there is an
entry for a Jonas Kiernander (1647-1717), who was born a farmer’s son in Kärna,
Östergötland. As the surname denotes, he
too was a clergyman, and he studied at Uppsala in 1670. In 1706, his son, Andreas Jonæ Kiernander, was
also a clerical student there. The
surname spanned four generations before dying out, and again the spellings Ker-, Kjer-, and Kier- were
used interchangeably. The origin of this
family’s name is explained away in Skrifter
in the line: “den berömde missionären
Johan Kiernander… otvivelaktigt härstammade från samma släkt”, or “the celebrated
missionary Johan Kiernander… undoubtedly originated from the same family”.
If there was, though,
a relationship between these two families it remains as yet undiscovered. Such was the nature of society at that time,
however, that the records of mothers, wives, and daughters were very rarely detailed,
and so there might have been some unrecorded, or yet undiscovered, link by
marriage or maternal descent. If there
was no relation through blood, then this later Jonas Kiernander might have adopted
the surname out of some other association with, or respect for, his fellow
alumni of the University of Uppsala. Otherwise, the two families might have originated
from nearby farmsteads in Östergötland, and the prefixes may be locational
indicators. Ker-, Kjer-, and Kier- could be derived from Kärna, where
Jonas Kiernander’s father’s farm was no doubt situated. Sveno Laurentii was an
influential man and, as the son of a farmer himself, may also have been a
landowner, perhaps in this locality. This
use of a locative prefix with the –ander
suffix was quite common. So, perhaps, with Kärna
not being far from Åsbo, the two Kiernander families were somehow related
afterall.
A letter kept
in the Swedish National Archives seems to go against both theories, however. Written in 1809 it describes the “äventyrlige Joh. Z. Kiernander och hans prästsläkt från Åsbo vilken inte är
att förväxla med den Kiernanderska prästsläkten från Glyttinge i Kärna socken”
– “the adventurous Joh. Z. Kiernander and his priestly family from Åsbo; who are
not to be confused with the priestly Kiernander family of Glyttinge in the parish
of Kärna”. Whether this is a more
trustworthy source than those above is only to be judged after more
investigation.
My reason for
calling this post “What’s in a name? –
Part 1” is that there is much more research to be done. I have recently registered the surname Kiernander
and its variants with the Guild of One-Name
Studies, and contacted NORNA: The
Nordic Cooperative Committee for Onomastic research and the Swedish Institutet för Språk och Folkminnen. I have also made contact with a genealogical society
in Östergötland which may have access to additional sources.
The etymology
that I find most appropriate at present relates to the surname of the famed
Danish philosopher, theologian and poet, Søren Kierkegaard, whose name was
often written Kjerkegaard. It was
pronounced Keer-ker-gore, and so the
initial sound is identical to the modern name Kiernander. The name meant ‘churchyard’, and is related
to the surnames Carr, Kerr, Kirk, and many others with the suffix Ker-.
These originated from the Teutonic word Kirche, a church, which may have derived from the Gælic cearcall, meaning a circle. As William Arthur explains in his
Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names (1857), “the primitive
places of worship among the Celts were round, a symbol of eternity, and the
existence of the Supreme Being, without beginning or end”.
Perhaps, then,
Kiernander simply means “Churchman”. It
is very apt, as generations of the Kiernander family were men of the cloth, and
the Kiernanders of Åsbo were a well-known prästsläkten,
or priestly family. Appropriate too,
that the first Protestant missionary to North India, who built at his own
expense the oldest surviving Protestant church there, Johann Zachariah
Kiernander, should be named, quite simply, “Churchman”.