| 10 June 2009 | | By Jove! And Venus, and Saturn ... | During a lesson recently, I pointed out to a class that many of the months of the year are named after Roman gods. There is Janus, God of Beginnings who kicks things off in January, then Mars for March, Juno, queen of the Gods for June. July and August are named after Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar who were also gods - by order of the Roman senate after their deaths.
The same happens with Italian days of the week, which are Lunedi, Martedi, Mercoledi, Giovedi, Venerdi, Sabato and Domenica. This is interesting because the English days of the week are identical - but we use Germanic gods in the same role. Monday is 'moon day' while Lunedi shares the same root as the word 'lunar' (the moonwas a goddess in ancient times). Tiuw of Tuesday, is the Mars of Martedi, a war god, just as Woden, the smooth talker of Woden's day is matched by Mercury, god of liars (amongst other things) on Mercoledi. Thor, nordic god of thunder is the same as the Jove who thunders on Giovedi, and Friday is devoted to Freya, the Germanic Venus. Both Sabato and Saturday are named after Saturn, while Sunday, is the day of the sun, dominus, the master.
It is interesting to see that what appear to be completely different words have exactly the same origins. It is also something that is highly relevant to learners of English, especially for those who share an Indo-European language. By exploring such connections vocabulary becomes much more memorable and therefore easier to recall. | | | | | 10 April 2009 | | Making money | Money is always a fascinating subject, and I found out a bit more about it recently when I discovered that the name comes from ancient Rome. Apparently the Roman mint used to be in the temple of Juno Moneta. 'Moneta' means 'warning' - as in the modern words 'admonish' and premonition and Juno got the name because her sacred geese warned the Romans of a planned sneak attack on the capitol. So, all coinage comes with a warning - very appropriate in these troubled financial times.
The Romans also gave us the old British pound (Libra - from the same scales that give us the modern zodiacal sign), shilling (from 'solidus' a coin established in the later Roman empire) and penny, which used to be abbreviated to 'd' because it came from the Roman denarius, which has been about in one form or the other for thousands of years. The 'L' for 'pound' is also why a pound in weight is abbreviated to 'lb' (LiBra), rather then 'pd'. In fact if you look at the symbol for a pound sterling, and you will see that it is in fact a highly stylized 'L'. The word 'sterling' has the old '-ling' dimunitive telling us it was less than a stater, the coin of which it was a smaller version. It's interesting to note that lessening value was built into the British currency from the start.
And then there is the dollar. The first of this coin was the Joachimsthaler, meaning 'of Joachim's valley' where the original mint lay. However, a coin of equivalent value was produced in the Inntal in Austria, and the coins became simply known as 'thalers'. From there to 'dollar' is a simple linguistic step.
Where the $ abbreviation comes from is highly disputed. One theory is that just as US cents are still called 'pennies', dollars were indicated by the 'S' for shilling. Just as the pound is differentiated from 'L' by having a cross-bar through the vertical, the shilling/dollar was differentiated from 'S' by a single vertical stroke.
Such complex origins are fascinating to contrast with those of some other currencies, such as the Japanese Yen, which was originally a coin and has a name simply meaning 'round thing'. | | | | | 25 February 2009 | | Viking legacy | A while ago I remarked to a colleague that the Vikings had left little trace in the English language, for all that they loom large in the national consciousness. Since then, it has seemed that every other day I'm presented with a word that the Vikings left behind in exchange for the British goods and maidens they plundered.
The Viking word that everyone knows is berserk, which means literally 'bare skin', and refers to a berserker's favourite apparel in battle. (Since many warriors used to die from infection by getting bits of dirty clothes pushed into their wounds, perhaps the berserkers were on to something.) However, the vikings made love as well as war, and I was surprised to discover that a husband is a 'hus bond' - a yeoman who owns his own house.
Furthermore, the vikings left vocabulary all over the landscape. A 'beck', as in a small stream, is a Viking word, and so is 'fell' meaning a high steep hill. Eliot's 'Mill on the Floss' comes from 'foss' a fast-flowing stream. We also have dykes and all those people who have wondered why hills - which go up - are sometimes called 'downs' might like to know that it comes from the viking root which also gives us 'dune'. The down which means 'going lower' is old English, and may come from the soft feathers on a goose's belly.
viking place names are very common, such as in the wold (forest) once owned by someone called Cod - i.e. the Cotswolds. Then there's Jorvik, which became York, which crossed the Atlantic to become New York. Many Viking settlements ended with the suffix -by (Whitby, Selby), and it is from here that we get the word 'by-law' meaning local law.
'Sky' is another Viking word, though it used to mean 'cloud', and so is vole, the little burrowing rodent. But my favorite is hval (whale) - hross (horse). Some researchers believe that this whalehorse gives us our modern walrus, an idea I find oddly appealing. | | | | | 20 January 2009 | | Yesterday's news | Over the holiday season I got a Christmas card from someone in New Cross Gate in London. This got me thinking. New Cross? This cross, I believe one of the same crosses that gives its name to Charing Cross in central London, was put up in the middle ages. It's hardly new any more.
It's too late now, but perhaps people should have been more careful before putting the prefix 'New' into a name. with places like New York and New Orleans, this is reasonabe enough since however old they get, these cities will still be younger than York and Orleans. But what about the castle in Newcastle? That's hardly new any more. And perhaps we should rename part of Canada as Foundsometimeagoland.
Of course the problem has been around for ages. Isaac Newton got his name because his ancestor probably lived in a recently-made clearing in the forest (a 'ton' in old English is where places like Teddington and Headington get their name - they mean Hedda's clearing and Tedda's clearing respectively.) But the ton which was new back in the dark ages means that strictly speaking, the author of the Principia Mathematica should be Isaac Extremelyoldbynowton.
We can hope that time will mellow some of these linguistic oddities. After all how many people recall that Naples in Italy is Neapoli in Italian, and the name comes from a bunch of unimaginative Greek settlers who called their colony 'Neo polis' - New city? | | | | | 25 October 2008 | | Naming countries | Let us consider the French Republic. The country is called France, whether it is a republic as now, or a kingdom, as it was formerly. The people are French, and so is the language. All very neat and tidy.
Not so the United Kingdom, which would have to do something dramatic about its name if it ever became a republic, and its people, who are called, well, 'the people of the United Kingdom'. We can't call them Britons, because the people of northern Ireland are on another island from Britain, so we try to get around the issue by finding other ways to build our sentences.
The U.K. lacks what is called a demonym, which is the name for the people of the country. The United States has the same problem, but has solved it by taking for its people the name 'American', though this creates a few problems of its own, quite apart from annoying other Americans such as Canadians and Brazilians. For example, if we talk of 'being on American soil' do we mean being on the soil of the USA, or of the continent generally?
Then there are the Czechs. They have a demonym, as the previous sentence demonstrates, and they have a proper name for their country - the Czech Republic. But they don't have an informal name for it. The place used to be part of Czechoslovakia, but whilst the Slovaks live happily in Slovakia, the Czechs don't have Czechova or Czechia but have to make do with the full mouthful of 'The Czech Republic' every time.
This quirk of language could easily be solved. People of the USA could become Usanians, and the people of the UK could become Ukanians - but we won't. These odd problems with the language are like a loose floor tile that needs fixing, but after a while we become so used to living with it that we forget it's there. | | | |
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