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Help[Facts] Re: origins and meaning of Janssen
in reply to a message by johnoe18
Johannes gives you John in English and Jan in northern Germanic languages like Dutch and the Scandinavian languages.
-sen is just a way of writing -son (we don't actually pronounce the o sound, we just make a vague little noise called the neutral vowel, so in Scandinavia in particular they spell it with an e to show it's an unstressed syllable.
Johnson is a common surname in English, and Janssen is the same - Jan's son!
-sen is just a way of writing -son (we don't actually pronounce the o sound, we just make a vague little noise called the neutral vowel, so in Scandinavia in particular they spell it with an e to show it's an unstressed syllable.
Johnson is a common surname in English, and Janssen is the same - Jan's son!
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