Department of Humorous Names

23 September 2005

According to the Associated Press, the Cornwall Record Office in Britain has compiled a list of 1,000 odd or unusual names found in census, birth, death, and marriage records dating back to the 16th century. The list contains such gems as Abraham Thunderwolff and Freke Dorothy Fluck Lane.

The list was inspired by the discovery of a real-life Horatio Hornblower in county records, a name more famous as being that of C.S. Forester’s fictional naval hero. The real Horatio had six siblings, named Azubia, Constantia, Jecoliah, Jedidah, Jerusha and Erastus.

The records tell us that a man named Levi Jeans lived in Cornwall in the late-18th century.

Other names on the list include Boadicea Basher, Philadelphia Bunnyface, Faithful Cock, Susan Booze, Elizabeth Disco, Edward Evil, Fozzitt Bonds, Truth Bullock, Charity Chilly, Gentle Fudge, Obedience Ginger and Offspring Gurney.

Marriage records tell us that Nicholas Bone and Priscilla Skin were joined in wedlock in 1636. Charles Swine and Jane Ham were married in 1711 and John Mutton and Ann Veale tied the knot in 1791. Finally, Richard Dinner and Mary Cook were joined in 1802.

Stormy Weather

23 September 2005

Katrina devastated New Orleans and Mississippi. Now Rita is slamming into the Texas coast. Where do these names come from? Who picks them?

Traditionally, hurricanes were named for the saint’s day on which the hurricane occurred. This practice was prevalent in the Spanish West Indies. The same storm could have different names in different locales, depending on the day it struck each location as it moved across the Caribbean. On 13 September 1876, Hurricane San Felipe hit Puerto Rico. 52 years later, on 13 September 1928, Hurricane San Felipe the Second hit the island. This practice was even Anglicized on occasion; the September 1935 storm that devastated New England is known as the Labor Day storm.

With the advent of modern meteorology and storm tracking, the use of names that changed daily was untenable. The use of women’s names for storms began in the 1940s, following the use of a woman’s name for a storm in the 1941 novel Storm by George Stewart. Women’s names were used exclusively until 1978, except for 1951-52 when storms were named after the phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie, etc.). In 1978, male names were added to the list of names for Pacific storms and a year later, Atlantic storm name list followed suit.

For each year the World Meteorological Organization creates a list of 21 male and female names for Atlantic storms, one for each letter of the alphabet (letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z are not used due to the relatively few names that begin with those letters). The list includes French, Spanish, Dutch, and English names to reflect the languages spoken throughout the Caribbean. The names are periodically reused, although names of storms that cause significant destruction are retired from the list. So, it is unlikely that we will ever have a Katrina the Second.

The Tropical Prediction Center in Miami, Florida tracks Atlantic storms. As soon as one is identified with wind speeds in excess of 38 miles per hour (34 knots), the next name on the list is assigned to the storm. Not all of these tropical storms grow into hurricanes and not all make significant landfall. (Which explains why we can go from Katrina to Rita in only a few weeks.)

If the list of names is exhausted and more storms continue to arise, the plan is to start naming them with letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha, beta, gamma, etc.). This has never happened before, but is a near certainty this year as hurricane season runs through November and we’re already on Rita. The most storms on record in a single season is twenty one, recorded in 1933, but this was before the modern system of nomenclature was introduced. 1995 is second, with nineteen named storms that year.

Gone to the Dogs

23 September 2005

He may be man’s best friend, but no one is quite sure where his name comes from.

The word dog appears once in Old English, in a gloss from ca.1050, rather late in the Old English period. The gloss reads "canum docgena." Initially, dog was used to refer to particularly large canines. The origin of the word is obscure with no known root in other languages. Several European languages have cognates of dog, but these are all descended from the English word and provide no clue as to its original provenance.

Prior to the appearance of dog, the Old English word most commonly used to refer to canines was hund, or as we say today, hound. The word dates to as early as ca.857 and was originally used to refer to any canines. Starting ca.1200, hound began to be used in the restricted sense we know today, a hunting dog specialized for the chase, especially one that follows its prey by scent. Later the meaning was extended to chase dogs that rely on sight, such as greyhounds, and the terms scent hound and sight hound have come into use to differentiate between the two types.

Dog is also used to refer to a male canine and to males of other species such as foxes. The female counterpart is bitch, a term that dates to c.1000. The Old English bicce has only one known cognate, the Old Norse bikkja. Which is the original is unknown. If the Norse term is older, it may derive from the Lappish pittja, but the reverse could also be true and the Lappish could be derived from the Norse and ultimately the English. The use as a derogatory term for a woman dates to sometime before 1400.

As befits man’s best friend, dogs have a prominent place in English phraseology. One can go to the dogs (1565) or lead a dog’s life (1764). We are admonished to let sleeping dogs lie (1562) and after a night on the town to take a hair of the dog that bit you (1546). When one ruins something for everyone else, one is a dog in the manger (1573), after the fable of the dog that would not let the other animals eat even though it had no interest in the fodder itself. And of course, a torrential downpour is to rain cats and dogs (1738).

As a verb, to dog means to follow closely and persistently, 1519. It can also mean to close and secure a door or opening (1591), after the name of a type of clamp likened to a canine because of its jaws and teeth. In 20th century American slang, to dog it means perform lazily or shirk one’s duties.

The adjective dogged also carries the connotation of persistency (1779). But it can also mean sullen or morose (ca.1400) or simply refer to the characteristics of a canine (ca.1440).

To dog ear a book, meaning to turn down the corners of a page to mark one’s place, is from sometime before 1659. The use of dog ear as a noun to refer to folded down corner dates from ca.1725.

Dogfight has meant a battle between fighter aircraft since at least 1919, but it has been in use since 1880 to generally mean any scrap or melee.

So despite its obscure origin, dog, like the canine it represents, has become an integral part of our lives.

Esquivalence and Other Mountweazels

2 September 2005

The August 29th issue of The New Yorker contains an article by Henry Alford in the Talk of the Town section about esquivalience and other mountweazels. Esquivalience? Mountweazel? Surely those aren’t words to be found in a dictionary?

Well, it seems the first is in a dictionary and the second appears in an encyclopedia. The 2nd edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary defines the first as:

"esquivalience—n. the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities ... late 19th cent.; perhaps from the French esquiver, ‘dodge, slink away.’"

And Mountweazel appears in the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia has this to say about a certain Lillian Mountweazel:

"Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942-1973, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio. Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963, Mountweazel produced her celebrated portraits of the South Sierra Miwok in 1964. She was awarded government grants to make a series of photo-essays of unusual subject matter, including New York City buses, the cemeteries of Paris and rural American mailboxes. The last group was exhibited extensively abroad and published as Flags Up! (1972) Mountweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine."

That last bit about Combustibles magazine is the give away, for neither Mountweazel nor esquivalience exist outside those two publications. They are what is known in the publishing business as "copyright traps." On occasion, publishers of reference material will deliberately insert false information. If the information turns up in another source, the publisher knows that it was copied from them. They can then look more closely to determine if there are copyright violations in that or other entries. Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of the New Oxford American (and in full disclosure my editor for Word Myths) describes the practice as being "like tagging and releasing giant turtles" to see when and where they turn up again.

While this is a practice among some editors of reference works, copyright traps are generally of limited value as Fred Worth, author of a number of compilations of trivia, found out. According to www.snopes.com, in one of his works he inserted the "fact" that the first name of the TV detective Columbo was Philip. (Columbo’s first name was never mentioned on the show, becoming something of a running joke.) The game Trivial Pursuit, which was immensely popular in the 1980s, included this "fact." Worth sued the makers of the game, but lost. One cannot copyright facts, only the presentation of facts. The court ruled that a question and answer in a game was quite different from a trivia book. Simply repeating information that is part of a copyright trap is not, in and of itself, a copyright violation.

But esquivalience may have turned up one instance of, if not copyright violation, then sloppy research. According to the New Yorker article, the web site Dictionary.com included the word, but credited it Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English, which is published by the same group that produces Dictionary.com. Don’t bother to search Dictionary.com for the word now; it has been removed, although Onelook.com (a much superior dictionary web site) still has a ghost link to where the entry in Dictionary.com where the word once was.

Esquivalience is not the first "ghost word" to appear in a dictionary. Perhaps the most famous is dord, although that one was created by accident and not deliberately as a copyright trap. In the 1934 2nd edition of Webster’s New World Dictionary, dord appears as a word, defined as density. The entry should read "D or d," as it was intended as an abbreviation. But somewhere in the editorial process, someone omitted the spaces and gave it a pronunciation. The error was discovered in 1939 and printings of the dictionary from that date on corrected the error, but dord continued to appear in other, less well researched, dictionaries for years afterwards.

Esquivalience may be a ghost word, destined for oblivion, or at best to life as a lexicographic footnote, like dord. But there may be some hope for Mountweazel. In his New Yorker article, Alford uses the word as a noun meaning copyright trap, "six potential Mountweazels emerged." Keep your eyes open and perhaps others will be picking up the usage.

And in case you’re wondering, there are no mountweazels in Wordorigins.org. If one appears, it’s an error not a trap.

Barbarians

26 August 2005

This week we take a look at barbarians, or more specifically what words we have used for them. A barbarian is, of course, an uncivilized person, or perhaps more accurately someone from a civilization or culture other than our own. In English usage, the words barbarian and barbarous date to the 16th century. The obsolete barbar was in use earlier, dating to the 14th century. The English word is borrowed from the French and ultimately comes from Latin and Greek. The origin in Greek is probably echoic, the bar-bar as mimicry of what a foreign and unintelligible language sounded like. In ancient Greece, the word was used to refer to anyone from a non-Hellenic culture. In Roman usage, the word was used to mean someone who was neither Roman nor Greek, and in later usage to anyone from outside the empire.

Rome was, as we leaned in History class, subjected to several waves of barbarian invasions and Rome itself was sacked several times. This imagery has given rise to the phrase barbarians at the gates. I can only date this phrase to 1922. (If you know of earlier uses, please post them to the site’s discussion forum.)

So who were these barbarians who played such an important role in the fall of Rome?

Most of these were German tribes. The word German comes to us from Latin, where it was used to refer to any of a number of Teutonic peoples. It is not, however, from a known Teutonic root. The Teutonic tribes did not use this word for themselves. Instead, it is widely thought to be of Celtic origin, originally used by a Celtic people in northeastern Gaul (modern France) who were conquered by a Teutonic tribe and the name transferred to the conquerors. It is suggested that the Celtic root is gair, meaning neighbor, or gairm, battle-cry.

One of these Germanic invaders of Rome was the Vandals. They were a tribe that invaded Western Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries, eventually migrating to North Africa. Along the way, they sacked Rome in 455. The name Vandal is from the Latin name for the tribe. The word has been used since the 17th century to describe anyone who willfully destroys or defaces property.

Another tribe was the Goths. They invaded Western Europe in the 3rd through 5th centuries. English use of the tribal name dates to ca. 900. In 17th century, the meaning expanded to include anyone who behaves like a barbarian. Also in that century the adjective Gothic, previously restricted to denote things related to the barbarian tribe, expanded in meaning to include anything medieval, especially architecture. In the 19th century there was a revival of this architectural style and because of this, the term Gothic came to also be applied to certain genres of 19th century literature. More recently, starting in 1986, the term Goth has been used to describe a style of rock music and its fans, characterized by depressing lyrics, black clothing, and heavy eye makeup.

The Vikings were another group of Germanic invaders. Although they did not sack Rome, the Vikings were Scandinavian marauders of the 8th to 11th centuries who ravaged all the countries of Northern Europe, traveling as far as Moscow in the East and North America in the West. The word Viking is traditionally thought to be from the Old Norse vik, meaning creek, inlet, or bay, a reference to them coming from the sea. But the word is actually first found in Anglo-Frisian and is more likely from the Old English wic, meaning encampment or town. Like the Germans, outsiders applied the name to them. Viking was not common use in English in the centuries after the Viking invasions, undergoing a revival in English in the 19th century.

The Vikings are also called Norsemen. The adjective Norse is from a common Germanic root meaning north. The immediate source of the English word is either Dutch or Norwegian and dates to the 16th century. The term, however, did not originally refer to the Vikings, rather being used to refer to modern Norwegians. In the 19th century, the word began to be applied to the Vikings. Norse and Norsemen is also the root of the word Norman. The Normans being descended from Viking invaders of that region of France.

So if they weren’t called Vikings or Norsemen until the 19th century, what were they called? They were called Danes, a name that dates to 901. The Danes invaded and conquered much of northern and western England. It was only in more recent use when the term Dane became restricted to what is now known as Denmark. The area of England under Danish control was known as the Dane-law, a term in use since ca. 1050. And Danegeld, was an annual tax imposed to pay for protection against the Danes and sometimes to pay tribute to them to keep them from invading. Danegeld is not actually found until Norman times though, first appearing in the Domesday Book.

The Germans were not the only invaders of Western Europe as Rome faded. Various Asian peoples also made their way west to take their share of the spoils.

The Huns were an Asian nomadic people who invaded Europe in ca.375 and, under Atilla, ravaged Europe in the 5th century. The name has been in English use since sometime before 900. Since 1900, a Hun has been any person of brutal or violent character. The word is also associated with modern Germans, even though the Huns were not a Germanic people. This use comes from a quote made by Kaiser William II in 1900 during the siege of the Western legations in Beijing during the Boxer rebellion, "No quarter will be given, no prisoners will be taken. Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy. Just as the Huns a thousand years ago, under the leadership of Attila gained a reputation in virtue of which they still live in historical tradition, so may the name of Germany become known in such a manner in China that no Chinaman will ever again even dare to look askance at a German." Once World War I started, Allied propagandists made the most of this quotation and the Germans became known as the Hun.

Less well known than the Huns, probably because they didn’t come as far west, were the Bulgars. They were a Central Asian tribe that invaded eastern Europe in the 2nd century, eventually settling in what is now Bulgaria in the 7th century.

A later Asian invader were the Mongols. The English word is taken from the French and ultimately comes from the Mongol name for themselves. The Mongol Empire, 1206-1368, established by Genghis Khan, stretched from Korea to Hungary.