Talk:Brink (surname)

Corenbot template, and further facts per German source

The supposedly copyvio wording existed on Brink from 16:33, 25 April 2007 (but will disappear from there when i finish an edit in progress), and developed on that page in stages. The first words of it seem descended from the German WP, in light of the initial revision reading

Brink ist ein German und Dutch Familienname. Durch Auswanderer kam er auch in die USA, wo er seit mindestens 1850 zu den 50.000 häufigsten Namen gehört, nach Südafrika und anderen Ländern.

Der Name ist aus der Siedlungsbezeichnung Brink entstanden.

Im übertragenen Sinne bedeutet Brink „Hügel mit grünem Grass“. Woraus zu schließen ist das die Vorfahren freie Viehzüchter waren.

My essentially literal translation of that begins

"Brink" is a German and Dutch family name. Through emigration it came also to the USA (where it has been a member, since at least 1850, of the 50,000 most frequent names), to South Africa and other countries.

The name arose from the settlement-designation "Brink". [The link "behind" the word preceding this sentence implies that that word refers to the settlement which is the topic of the German Wikipedia's article "The settlement Brink".]

The last sentence requires me to speculate, as i would not think of uttering the German sentence and i'm guessing that Züchter is something like "grazer": it may be saying that

their ancestors were free to graze their cattle (livestock in general?)

"Woraus" means "where from" or "out of which" and "schließen" literally means the infinitive of the verb "close", and together they could mean "In closing, therefore", or i guess conceivably "From which one can conclude".

So that being my lousy translation, let's see Google's lousy translation using a larger vocabulary and not recognizing idioms:

'Brink' is a German and Dutch family name. He came by emigrants in the United States, where he had held since at least 1850 to 50,000 names frequently heard in South Africa and other countries.

The name is from the village name Brink emerged. In a sense it means "Brink" "hill with green grass".

What to conclude is that the ancestors were free ranchers.

(That was from previewing, on :de:, the markup up for the old revision on :en:. The following is the Google translation of the 13:02, 4 May 2006 revision of de:Brink (Familienname):

Brink is a German and Dutch family name. He came by emigrants in the United States, where he had held since at least 1850 to 50,000 names frequently heard in South Africa and other countries.

The name is from the village designation Brink emerged.

In a sense, Brink "with green grass hills." What is to close the free ancestors were ranchers.

Well, i was so concerned with the last sentence that i never focused on the "green grass" sentence. Rather than risk (or raise suspicion of) drawing on the Google translation, now that i've seen it, i'll simply say that there is no explicit "it" in the sentence, and the only thing implicit in that direction is that "bedeutet" is the present third person singular form of the verb bedeuten; i have no doubt that "Brink" is the subject of the clause whose verb is "bedeutet", despite one Google translation adding "it" and the other simply losing the verb.

The important conclusion IMO is that the duplication between the :en: Brink (and Brink (surname), which i mostly copied from it) and www.wanabo.com/music/brink reflects the ext site's use of WP material, and not the reverse. (Presumably wanabo will go on a list of sites for Corenbot to ignore in checking for copyvios!)

And i'm not going to suggest that these translations are an adequate verification of the facts apparently asserted in the German article, tho i think efforts more credible than mine should be made, to beef-up/correct the accompanying surname article from German, or equivalent English, sources.
--Jerzy•t 03:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]