Interesting personal factoid: my mothers maiden name is Helstrom, like Frank Herberts The Hellstrom Chronicles without the extra L. But my grandpa wasnt Swedish, but FINNISH, through and through. I always wondered about this. He was the Chief Building Inspector for Los Angeles County in his time, inspecting such engineering projects as the Harbor Freeway, the Long Beach Jetty, the Getty Museum (and the Holiday Inn tower nearby) and the Arco Towers in downtown L.A., among the huge list.) He was one of four engineer brothers from Hibbing, Minnesota, where he met my grandmother. I met a barfly once in Hollywood in my youth who worked under him and told me they used to call him, with some trepidation since he routinely made them jackhammer bad concrete pours, The Swede. I told him thats impossible because he was Finnish, to which he shook his head. But of course because of the name it was natural they would call him a Swede. Turns out our Finnish family name is a SLAVE NAME from the time that Finns had been enslaved by the Swedes and had to take the name of their Swedish masters. So my moms name is a slave name.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 05:42:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015