What's In A Name?

There's been a long interest in my part into the full meaning of my name, and also in those of other people. This sort of thing came up in an episode of Stargate a few years ago, episode [403]. The exchange went as follows:

Anise: You may call me Anise.
Dr. Jackson: Anise?
Anise: It means "Noble Strength".
Dr. Jackson: I'm Daniel. It means, uh, "God is my judge".
Col. O'Neill: I'm Jack. It means... What's in the box?

I didn't want to be like Jack O'Neill and be clueless as to what my name means. Of course I did the research, and I've also always been intrigued when I hear foreign sounding names, and I can guess where they are from, but sometimes it can be really hard to figure out what they mean. Just look at the English names Robert and Kevin. If you didn't know the history, you might never guess. I think Pilar is the only English-uncommon name I've successfully deduced.

Anyway, more along the lines of surnames, I started thinking recently again about the whole "Who was the first person who just randomly made up a last name?" instead of having it be a lineage name (like Michaelson) or related to a family career (Miller), or a locus (Van Vessem), or even in some cases, a seemingly random word is picked, but there is probably some esoteric association. My own surname happens to be the same as a word for a certain type of animal, but I don't know how it got associated with that side of the family. My mother's maiden name is an archaism in another language for the word "monk" (and also similar to that word in a different language). Again, who knows how that caught on? And as near as I can tell, my maternal grandmother's maiden name might be related to a toponym, but I have no way of knowing what came first, or even whence came that name. My last name has 4.6 million results on google, and is the name of at least a dozen notable people. My mother's last name has 1,460 results, and I can recognize immediate relatives somewhat quickly. Her mother's name yields no results for most spellings, but 2,970 for a sepcific variation, but 7,640 if done with the non-latin characters. Most seem to be about the place, however, it's quite possible that's just where it goes back to.

Why I Chose Paratactic Cataphora

My friend called me up to catch up, and in the course of the conversation, we started talking about how he wants to branch his business off by himself, and he's getting a website set up for himself and how this was all going. He ran into the trouble of picking a domain name for his site. He had wanted to use his name originally, but feared that due to his long, relatively uncommon surname (359,000 hits on Google, I consider mine uncommon and I have 4.6 million), people might not be able to remember it. On top of that, he has an uncommon (in spelling) consonant cluster in his name, an unusual vowel dipthong (also for spelling), and a tap, so I can see it getting mixed up a bit, even if they perfectly remembered his name's pronunciation. We had a discussion about different elements that he might want to incorporate into his name, and while he has several good ideas and bases of names, it shows the reason why you hand over a $50,000 check to a naming firm employee who comes up with a new catchy brand name (it also reminded me of the good old days trying to come up with a good band name). Makes me want to get into the business though.

One point that came up that I found interesting was that a lot of names he came across and produced during his efforts followed a simple format:

simple color/adjective + simple noun + (simple job related word)

Which you can see in names like Bluetooth and Redhat (and a few better ones he found). Several of his suggestions though were already taken, and many others were very similar to names in use for similar services. Maybe we are approaching that top of the curve.

Taking Word Play Too Seriously

In reading a review of an album while I was searching for lyrics to a specific song, I came across this snippet:

Of course, this couldn’t be a proper punch-in-the-face, Locust look-alike without some wink-wink, nudge-nudge song titles. “A Biggot Is a Spic” and “Awesome Rape” are just two unsettling plays on words to ponder while letting the lyrics spew forth like the wrath of bitter Teletubbies. [emphasis mine]

Aside from slightly with some other curiosities of the review, I was quite caught up with the remark I have bolded. I could not figure out how these were supposed to be plays on words. I thought at first that the former was perhaps the words "biggot" and "spic" mapped onto some reference I was supposed to catch. Awesome Rape didn't strike me the same way, and I thought that maybe there was a word break difference or some sort of pun that I was missing, but I just couldn't grasp it. I found a seperate reviewer who commented that the two aforementioned songs had the best titles, and then I realized that by play on words, I think the author merely meant to say that they are unusual juxtapositions of elements.

[term for a racist; biggot] + [racist term; spic]
[positive word; awesome] + [negative word; rape].

It's probably just me, but I never really considered this type of mismatching to be a form of word play, but rather more along the lines of an oxymoron or an inherent contradiction, which I don't really think of as word play. It goes to show that getting caught up in the terminology can lead to wasting a portion of your day researching the subtle nuances that arguably differ various pieces of language.

A Wordsmith's Way To A Comfortable Seat

I was over at a friend's house watching a movie, and she got up to adjust something, and I started lying down. She said "don't lay down." I say "okay" and finished lying down, and she said "hey, I said don't lay down!" and I said "don't lay what down?"¹

Of course I knew what she meant, but I took advantage of the fact that for some people, like myself, a distinction is made between LIE and LAY, and for others, like her, the distinction is less clear. And I really wanted to lie down on that couch.

Note ¹: These excerpts might sound like we are being quite hostile, but actually it was all in good fun. It's a shame there is little in way of marking intonation or making a larger context clear. I guess the best summation for the attitude would be "kidding around"

An Apt Subject

Spam emails often play on the fact that people will see a common name, with a typical email type subject. One of my email accounts just started being spammed, after over 2 1/2 years of keeping it clean. Most of the emails look like they might be related, very often with subjects like Re:, or Sorry for taking so long to respong with the hopes that you might glaze over the fact that the name is unfamiliar, and nowadays, often quite unusual. I remember a Language Log post on this, I'll post a link if I can find it. So, the email I received (which I will not be opening as it is potentially a pandora's box of worms) was authored with a relatively uncommon name, and had no space between the middle initial and the surname. And while these can be mildly interesting, or clues to the fact that it is spam, the real spectacular part was the subject itself:

Edwardo JSalvador             Re: multifarious sophism

Next Target: Language Log

Earlier today, Catáfora Paratáctica was mentioned under Linguablogs in a post by Polyglot Conspiracy titled LinguaYouTube, Linguablogs, Linguablogwants. I've been a fan of Polyglot Conspiracy for some time, and it's an honor to be mentioned there. I recommend anyone else who reads this to check it out.

Pan-Slavic Miscommunication

In response to a comment that I received, I started thinking about the distinctions between Slavic languages. It's mostly anecdotal, but I've almost had more luck understanding Polish and Croatian than Russian at times. This goes against the logic that more closely related languages are easier to understand. Last time I was in Ukraine, it was terrible sometimes trying to converse and read in Russian, which is East Slavic like Ukrainian, but I seemed to have a lot less difficulty once I was in Poland, even though I don't know any Polish, which is West Slavic. My mother too, I know, has been able to understand a bit from various South Slavic languages, and there is plenty of evidence for high degrees of mutual intelligibility between all, but it seems to not line up quite right.

Just about the only Croatian I can specifically remember hearing was Luka Kovač saying things here or there on the show E.R. years ago and me realizing that I understood perfectly, and then having to remember that the language is actually relatively closely related.

If an actual example would help illustrate, I would probably have to say that East Slavic languages all use variants of собака, while everybody else seems to use пес, or something like that. Interestingly, the Russian variant of пес, пёс, seems to be a bit limited in its usage, while, and maybe this is just for me and some people I know, пес is the default and most common word to use for a dog.

Incidentally, a Ukrainian friend of mine always tells me that I write and talk like a Belarusian. But who knows what that is supposed to mean?

Gender Distinctions No Longer Ill Formed

Several people I know are soon to be parents. Now, while examples of metonymy are not unheard of when talking about the father of a child (such as he's having a baby), I think I might be stretching a little too far with this. Specifically, the context required is that the person being spoken to is more familiar with the father than the mother, or that the father is more the point of interest in this conversation. So, what I preceded to do the other day was to say that a mutual male friend was "pregnant," I guess meaning that he is an active and relevant participant in the pregnancy, since he cannot occupy the traditional role when describing one as pregnant. The typical form we expect then is with females only, which is why you usually have the question mark, as it ?Harry is pregnant and curious Spanish distinct forms, such as embarazado which don't come up so much .

Everyone seems to understand exactly that when I say Gavin is pregnant, that Gavin is going to be a father, which could be paralleled to me saying Brianna is pregnant which does imply that Brianna is going to be a mother, or parent if we want the parallel to be even closer.

I could've sworn that one of my co-workers used this usage in talking about somebody we all knew, but now I am thinking that it just reminded me of my usage, and I sort of over-wrote my memory of somebody using a more common metonym, most likely the aforementioned Harry is having a baby.

Basic Color Term(s)

My cousin's youngest child has only one color term, no matter what you are talking about. Ask him his favorite color, what color anything is, which color to choose, (practically anything mentioning "color") and he is always going to give you the same answer: blue.

Junior Comparative Etymology

My work with children has always been full of all sorts of interesting anecdotes, but often it even delves into my work just a little bit (as can be seen here, here, and here). One great example just happened a few hours ago. The notorious Blake (with his own posts here, and here) asked me to say something in Ukrainian. This happens to be a pet peeve of mine, and one of many people I know who speak Ukrainian, or just about any language really, but it's actually quite duplicitous in that I love the opportunity to show off my stuff, and love it when people take an interest in my language. As such, I asked him what he would like me to say. He said "sun," and after I clarified that he did not mean "son," I told him the word was сонце [sɔnʦɛ], and he gave the following response:

Sontse! It's like sol in Spanish and Italian, and sun in English! Why do they all start with s?

Not Helping

Fanny Cochrane Smith was a Tasmanian aboriginal, and before her death in 1905, made wax cylinder recordings of the Tasmanian language, in the form of songs. This, placenames, and a few handed down snippets seem to be all that is left. I cannot seem to be able to locate samples of these recordings, or transcripts, or anything to get a peak at these. Even if it is just effectively another Phaistos disc, I think it would be a wonderful thing to have, at least easier, access too, and who knows, maybe it will spur some interest, or even allow some people to take a crack at it, comparatively, or just for the sake of looking at it.

On Chomsky

I meet for lunch regularly with a few friends who work in other disciplines (denistry, for example) and the last time I made it, only one other person was there. While we were eating, I was asked if I would be able to transfer some files from my computer to his. He pointed out that, as long as we are going to be sending files, and he was doing me a favor, he could perhaps send me something that I would enjoy. He said that knowing I was a linguist, I must be a fan of Noam Chomsky's, and he had some sort of selection of something by him, and he'd be happy to let me have it.

Though it's quite hard to argue against Chomsky in terms of him having some influence and all in the circle of linguistics, I know a lot of people (one of my entire departments, for example) who don't particularly like him or his theories. It's just a sort of stereotypical thing about linguists that I know people can find quite irksome. (Though it's not as bad as "what languages do you speak?" or the old classic from when I tell my relatives and friends what I was getting a degree in "what are you going to do with that?")

This is followed up by a post by Arnold Zwicky, wherein he mentions the description of a gang of linguists/linguist enthusiasts as:

A group for linguists, armchair linguists, would-be linguists, budding linguists, linguists-in-training, linguistic anthropologists, and/or anybody interested in the scientific study of languages. If Noam Chomsky is your hero... you can join, too. :) [emphasis mine]

I guess it's just a prevalent thing. I'm sure many linguists do like Chomsky a lot, but I don't know if he even chalks up to being our mascot, let alone our esteemed champion and exalted leader.

It's All Just Spanish To Me

My mother called me while I was at work, as she does on occasion, and we spoke to one another in Ukrainian, as is our wont. After we speak for a few minutes, Blake comes up to me and says:

Who were you talking to in Spanish?

Good = Bad

During a lecture on case/roles I was attending, the speaker mentioned the benefactive case, and then make a distinguishment between that, and what he called the malefactive case. When I originally learned all about this, it was easier just to join the two and use a phrase like dative of interest, but apparently he wanted to avoid using that nomenclature for various reasons. Unless I am mistaken, and I might just be, there is no language that distinguishes between what he seperated into the benefactive and malefactive cases (past the fact that one is good and one is bad). Specifically, the following sentences always operate in the same fashion.

He stole money for her [benefactive]

He stole money from her [malefactive]

A colleague of mine suggested lumping the two into a "factive case," though this term seems to be used a little bit with a different meaning, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. He was half joking with the term anyway. Either way, I still don't see why these aren't placed together. I've seen a few people suggest languages as having this distinction, but I really haven't found any clear examples so far. For all I can tell, they may basically function just the same as the above examples in English, where there is clearly a distinction between when one gains and one is a victim, but there is no real useful distinction between the two past the meaning, they really do seem to be two sides of the same coin.

Code-Switching Cognates

A friend of mine bought a jacket that had small belts on the shoulders that have very little function to my knowledge outside of holding one's beret. When I first saw it, I said something along the lines of the following:

...and you even have a place to put your beret.
[ænd.ju.ivən.hæv.ə.pʰleʲs.tu.pʰʊt.jɚ.bʌ'ɹɛt]

...oh I mean beret.
[oʷ.aʲ.min.bɚ'eʲ]

Which wasn't an example of my incompetence, but rather one that stems from the fact that I almost never say the word BERET. When I was younger, however, I had a lot of occasion to say баретка [ba'rɛtka], so I guess I just kind of went to the default form in my head, even though I was using English.

Drive-By Hypercorrection

During the return from an outing with a friend, Alice, we pulled up to a red light, and to our left was another vehilce with two fuzzy dice attached hanging from the rear-view mirror. Alice proceeded to let out the following remark(s):

What a lovely fuzzy die he has hanging from his mirror!

...and the other die is lovely too.

Or something to that effect. It's a spectacular example of hypercorrection, and then a correction of a hypercorrection, all in one turn of speech.