Severino :

[How Brown]

A question for anyone....

It occurs to me that I've heard the first name Severino before...but it was a person of Hispanic origin who had it...not someone of Slavic background like George Chapman.

Tonight, as I looked through newspapers for articles on George Chapman...I switched gears and tried Severino Klosowski instead.

Numerous articles...in fact nearly 1,000...appeared between the years 1925 and 1950...but they all were stories featuring people of Hispanic origin with that first name....Severino.... from Ruiz to Garcia to Bravo to Guerra....all Spanish surnames.

So...I'm wondering.

Is Severino a first name which anyone is familiar with as being used by someone from a Slavic background other than Chapman ?'

[Adam Went]

Hey How and all,

Is it plausible that Severino was just a nickname, a continuation of Severin - or perhaps even another alias?

Perhaps Klosowski's relatives/ancestors also had ties to the Spanish in some way.....all just theoretical of course.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Phil Carter]

Hello all,

I thought that it may be worth adding that a certain world famous sportsman had a near variation of this name..... the late, great

Severiano "Seve" Ballesteros Sota (1957-2011)

Infact, take away the "a".. and it is "Severino"

best wishes

Phil

[Chris Scott]

Hi How
I'm sure that Adam has the right of it in saying that this is merely a form of the name Severin, which is German/Scandinavian in origin.
In the 1891 census there are 47 people listed with the forename Severin. Those born outside of the UK come from, among others, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Finland.
In 1901 the count is 43 and again they come from this northern European spread - Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and north France, Finland and Belgium.
I have also seen the name spelled Severyn and in one case, specifically in connection with Chapman, as Seweryn.
The Spanish form of the name, as in the famous golfer, is Severiano.
To get technical, all these variants are forms of the Latin name Severianus, which is in a turn a diminutive of the name Severus, as in the emperor Septimius Severus.
So there! :-)

[Adam Went]

Pretty conclusive there Chris, nice work. :)

In any case, failing all other possibilities, it's far from uncommon for the names of suspects to be mis-spelt by accident - including Klosowski's itself (see Arthur Neil's description of him as Kloskovski, for instance.)

Cheers,
Adam.

[How Brown]

Chris:

Ditto to what AW said...issue settled,old man. Thanks...

[Helena Wojtczak]

As a half-Pole I am glad to be able to contribute to this board by helping you out by giving you the definitive correct answer to your question!

Kłosowski's name was in fact SEWERYN.

How it came to be Severino was that the part of Poland he lived in was under Russian rule, so all offical documents were in Russian - birth certificate, all those references he brought to England with him, etc.

Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. So when these documents were translated into English, the correct Polish spelling was bypassed and it was written as Severin, which got corrupted to "Severino." Or indeed Severino might be the Russian equivalent of Seweryn.

I can give another example of what happens when a Polish name is "threaded through" Russian before getting itself into English.

Klosowski's brother in law's name was Stanisław (the same as my father's). When written into Russian then (mis)translated into English, it became Stanislaus. There is no such name as "Stanislaus" in Polish. Or "Severino".

[How Brown]

Dziekuje Helena ! ;)

[Helena Wojtczak]

Dziekuje Helena ! ;)


Prosze bardzo!