The COSYNS Tribe

Our aim through this website is to acquaint our descendants with their ancestry and to make certain that those who have gone before will not be forgotten. We hope that our efforts will interest and bring pleasure to our contemporaries and descendants.

It is most interesting to follow, all through the generations, the different spellings of the name and its final arrival to our present spellings and noting that the pronunciation has nearly not changed over the years.

Regarding the pronunciation of the name, it seems strange that after all the various spellings, with the exception of the Dutch-speaking countries – which peculiarity we shall examine more in detail hereunder – the name is generally still pronounced in all areas as originally spelled that is "Cosyns" ; the "y" pronounced as long "i".

The name as we generally pronounce it today and as it has been pronounced for hundred of years, does not jibe with rules of all the common languages, still it came from the Basque Country in the Pyrenees Mountains, situated between Spain and France, according several local French sources.

It must be remembered that these Basque people probably could not speak other languages at all until they made their home in foreign northern countries. So they intermarried first with the French and later with the Dutch so it is quite understandable that, with French, Dutch and English, their names acquired many different spellings.

According to several British genealogists, our name meets itself in the British Isles from the year 1066, date of the Santlache Battle near Hastings, what confirms our presence in Normandy before this period.

Due to the fact of a specific historical link with the Dutch people, there is one particular spelling – and pronunciation – that deserves to be more explained ; Holland, in the later half of the 16th century offered the most open asylum of the continent of Europe for the persecuted, and for that reason, and also because it was "near to flee to", the Huguenots of all parts of southern European countries sought its shelter. They stayed there mainly in a region situated between Utrecht and Hilversum, before emigrating in the hope of better days, towards the American continent.

Very often people wonder about this Dutch peculiarity and wish to know a little about the appearance of this twin dots above the letter "y". The explanation of it is to found in the birth of the Dutch language in the early half of the 16th century in Holland, that become The Netherlands in 1579, and which development spread out on several decades from this period.

Under the impact of The Dutch East India Company (VOC), that having a constant need of a common written language to manage this gigantic multinational, instead of the several ancient local languages (this of the Holland chairmen, this of the Flemish staff, etc…) and the German-speaking Hanoverian bankers, around 1620 prominent writers met, such as Hooft, Vondel and several grammatici in `Letterkunstige Vergadering` (free translated as Language Academy), concerning the form and rules to which had satisfy the new standard language. Which language would obviously also need to be used to administer this new born state, constituted of a set of gathered provinces possessing each their own specific accent and/or dialect.
After 1620 you see as evidence, that Vondel will reconsider older working on the basis of the new acquired Standard Educated Dutch (ABN) insights.

The influence of German on the ABN has been very large ; thereby on the one hand the German immigrants in the Dutch cities played a role, and on the other side the German grammaticism, dictionaries, etc… which all existed numerous beforehand, had very large authority in The Netherlands.
Many words and also the use of this particular twin dot ( ¨ ) accent have been directly taken over from German, and for example, are used when the letter "y" is pronounced as long "ey" (as "hey man !").

Very captivating is also the settlings of the pronouncement of this new ABN. One found it very not done if you had draw consonances and words at the pronouncement of a lot with your face and your mouth in all kinds of turnings had wring. A "w" pronounced with of those strongly moving lips, which found the language developers but nothing. Thus they stipulated that "w" with hardly moving lips, stiffly against the cogs, had been pronounced.
The Dutch elite which were busy with developing this standard language arranged himself in all these new pronouncements and in what concerns us, placed therefore these German twin dots on their former Greek Upsilon.

This existing language, since internationally called Dutch, was then introduced in Belgium towards the second half of the 19th century, to serve as common administrative language for the Flemish-speaking of this state.

And finally, the last development of this Greek "y" story is even interesting to know ! From 1870 with the invention of the type-writer, all the ABN-speaking people got to using both "i" and "j" to form this dotted "ÿ" with this new machine… This habit entered the customs and henceforth they still used this combination of two letters, according the ABN rules settled by Hooft and Vondel. But which combination turned out rather incomprehensible and unpronounceable for a large majority of the other regions not practising Dutch in the world.

In conclusion and when we discover all the various spellings arisen in the course of time, it was always the phonetic option which decided on all the changes of the spelling of our original name worn by our ancestors.

Even if the leading name of this website is Cosyns, we open it to all the names which could reasonably arise from it.

Whoever claims to have an interest, a personal link or a family link with a person taken back on this website can obtain a login to let himself add his own data and also show for free all the information which are resumed there.

We hope that you enjoy our website and hope to see you soon.

Consult here an interview about the ABN

Caveat : A collection of Coat of Arms from the early 16th Century.