de: Ruggles?

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

On Mon, 24 Apr 1995, Michael G. Koopman wrote:

> Bonnie,
> 
> Thanks for identifying Charles Hollander reference, but perhaps we
> have missed linkage through derivation or variance introduced through
> port of entry treatment?  Yet, how would one improperly Anglicais
> names already more wasp-ish than those stamping papers?  Perhaps an
> indebture to Portsmouth records would haul up those Ruggles?  I may
> speak m'only to your gellerkhins in churning up such miscreant ideas.
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
It's difficult.  I wonder if the New England records could indicate the 
origin of the name.  Hollander points to TRP's recent ancestorial history 
but what's in a name?  In the end we don't know much more about the 
actual name "Ruggles," except that it was part of (the middle, to be 
specific) a larger name, equally arbitrary. 

Maybe we should defer to Godel's Formally Undecidible Propositions and 
just consider it bad taste as the best that we could come up with.  Of 
course, then, that would not be something which we could prove, a 
phenomena just as slippery.  

I guess I never really thought about it.

Bonnie Lenore Surfus