Fitz = Bastard
I would like the define the prefix Fitz for you here:
The Anglo-French word for ’son’; chiefly Hist. in patronymic designations, in which it was followed by the name of a parent in the uninflected genitive. Some of these survive as surnames, e.g. Fitzherbert, Fitzwilliam, etc.; in later times new surnames of the kind have been given to the illegitimate children of royal princes. Also in 12-15th c. used occas. in adopted AF. phrases, beau fitz = ‘fair son’; fiz a putain = ‘whoreson’.
So when you’re watching Fitzgerald at the Olympics, you’re betting on a bastard!
This entry was posted on Friday, February 17th, 2006 at 4:56 pm and is tagged with royal princes, whoreson, illegitimate children, french word, fitzwilliam, designations, bastard, fitzgerald, olympics, phrases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
on October 24th, 2006 at 6:59 am
[…] Okay, but there’s a problem. Some really smart people have stated that the prefix from Dana’s last name (”Fitz”) literally means an illegitimate child. Here… read what some smart guy had to say about it: “The Anglo-French word for ’son’; chiefly Hist. in patronymic designations, in which it was followed by the name of a parent in the uninflected genitive. Some of these survive as surnames, e.g. Fitzherbert, Fitzwilliam, etc.; in later times new surnames of the kind have been given to the illegitimate children of royal princes. Also in 12-15th c. used occas. in adopted AF. phrases, beau fitz = ‘fair son’; fiz a putain = ‘whoreson’.” […]