Familienname - Surname

White-oak. That’s my surname. Without that pretentious hyphen, of course. I’ve never really given much though to its etymology. Strangers always comment on how unusual it is. Or ask me my family history. Or even worse, ask me, then before I get a chance to say ‘I’ve got no idea, stop asking me’, start to theorise themselves about how my ancestors MUST have been druids, or carpenters that made white-oak furniture, or a man who lived under a white-oak tree, or an array of other equally quaint theories relating to professional or environmental circumstances. While it’s possible these could be how my name came into being, isn’t it equally possible my great-times-fifty-granddad was a white supremacist or a psycho-killer stuffed his victims inside a white oak tree trunk. Nobody ever suggests the sinister ones, which, by the state of my extended family would probably be much closer to the truth.