Here's a story I've heard many times. Therefore it must be true ??!!!
A wife sells her jewelry (or her hair) and gives the proceeds to her husband
to "Buy us a nice surname."
He returns >from the bureaucrats office and she asks, "What name did you buy?
"Fisher," he says.
She starts cursing him: "My jewels, my hair! Fool, is that the best you could do?"
He: "If you knew how much I had to pay them to leave out the dagesh >from the peh!"
[The Hebrew letter peh is pronounced P if it contains a central dot
(dagesh); without the dagesh it's pronounced Ph or F]
Michael Bernet, New York
mbernet@aol.com