The Power of Names (Part II)
In the previous post I mentioned five names which I'd more or less pulled out randomly from my mental 'hat'. (I've also added notes on a whole bunch of other names suggested by various commenters, and I'll add more if you suggest more!)
To those names I'd like to add Darwinian, Dickensian and Nietzschean. I think the first has become one of those terribly misused labels applied indiscriminately to any form of selective process (how ironic!) while the second is only slightly misused for all manner of descriptive and picaresque writings. The last has, unfortunately, seen too much accurate use in this age — although the misuse of the label is still quite common.
It's interesting to see how we define whole periods by some people. The most obvious case in modern history is Victoria, Queen of England. She was born in 1819 and died in 1901; from her ascension to the throne of the United Kingdom in 1837, she more or less presided over the bulk of the 'long' 19th century. I've always preferred to define that period as being from 1776 to 1914, seeing the modern importance of the USA, but Hobsbawm (no we are NOT having 'Hobsbawmian', what an abomination) is a Marxist and prefers the French revolution in 1789 as the starting point. In 1914, the First World War broke out, and the major culprits were all her junior kinsmen.
That period gave rise to the majority of names on our list, which is serious food for thought.
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From NBL: Yes, that is quite an impressive list of mathematicians and physicists; but I think Copernican, Pythagorean, Platonic (now horribly misused to mean 'neutral' or 'regularised' rather than 'ideal'), and Euclidean probably have sufficient cultural capital — the rest aren't definitive of a large enough idea (by which I mean culturally far-reaching). I suppose we have to add Cartesian, for Descartes, as suggested elsewhere. Einsteinian is OK, but seriously, what would you mean by it in public?
To those names I'd like to add Darwinian, Dickensian and Nietzschean. I think the first has become one of those terribly misused labels applied indiscriminately to any form of selective process (how ironic!) while the second is only slightly misused for all manner of descriptive and picaresque writings. The last has, unfortunately, seen too much accurate use in this age — although the misuse of the label is still quite common.
It's interesting to see how we define whole periods by some people. The most obvious case in modern history is Victoria, Queen of England. She was born in 1819 and died in 1901; from her ascension to the throne of the United Kingdom in 1837, she more or less presided over the bulk of the 'long' 19th century. I've always preferred to define that period as being from 1776 to 1914, seeing the modern importance of the USA, but Hobsbawm (no we are NOT having 'Hobsbawmian', what an abomination) is a Marxist and prefers the French revolution in 1789 as the starting point. In 1914, the First World War broke out, and the major culprits were all her junior kinsmen.
That period gave rise to the majority of names on our list, which is serious food for thought.
=====
From NBL: Yes, that is quite an impressive list of mathematicians and physicists; but I think Copernican, Pythagorean, Platonic (now horribly misused to mean 'neutral' or 'regularised' rather than 'ideal'), and Euclidean probably have sufficient cultural capital — the rest aren't definitive of a large enough idea (by which I mean culturally far-reaching). I suppose we have to add Cartesian, for Descartes, as suggested elsewhere. Einsteinian is OK, but seriously, what would you mean by it in public?
Labels: Adjectives, History, Names, Words
etched with acid at 9:10:00 am
2 Comments:
What about the numerous mathematicians, astronomers and physicists whose names have become adjectives? Pythagorean, Platonic, Euclidean, Copernican, Keplerian(?), Eulerian, Gaussian, Pfaffian, Lobachevskian, Riemannian, Einsteinian, Grassmanian.
Aristotelian, Platonic, Socratic (I know Platonic has been mentioned but it's worth repeating)?
In the vein of Darwin, Lamarckism, and Mendelian?
What about Pavlovian?
Lutherian (for religiosity)?
What about Arthurian? As in the myths? Do fictional people count?
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