's Wordplay

I live in a fantasy realm, as do all of you; for the medium of communication does not exist except in our minds — without mind, there is no meaning to language. Hence each word we engrave or recite or thoughtfully deploy — that word is a fantastic creature, whose meaning arises only in imagination and the life of the neural net.

And so in my head, Raymond Chandler is a person whose name is associated with both wisdom and wickedness (Raymond = 'counsel-guardian', Chandler = 'candlemaker'). And also some of the most beautiful crime novels ever written in American.

When I see the name of Alistair Cooke, I think of letters from America, and also of intestinal fortitude (Alistair = 'defender of men', Cooke = well, 'cook').

And here I sit and look at the bookshelf in front of me, and I think of Jacob the deceiver (he who ensnares another's foot) and Robert Frost as a cold hard brilliant intensity (Robert = 'fame-bright', Frost = 'frozen-ness'). There is no end to it, nor do I desire such interminably. I am content. And so is my blog.

No-Name

I've been through the desert,
On a horse, with No-Name.

That's how it ought to be punctuated, for chess players and others who frequently deal with anonymity. It is good to be out of the rain. It is good to forget your name. Having no name makes it easier all round.

Journeyman (Part 5)

The chariots of the sun were only to be driven by Helios himself. Yet it was only much later that we realised the sun was driven by the water-producer, Hüdrogenes. So much for Faith and Religion in the face of the great challenger — Nomenclature.

It is not science, we see with some conscience, that has been the enemy. Rather it is what Confucius had long averred and Eliot wrote of cats, that the naming of names is the most important thing of all.

For in the cold tablet of the periods, like some fell theology, a sequence of truth warped by names arises — Water-Maker, Sunlight, Stone, Beryl, Flux, Coal, Ash-Maker, Acid-Maker, Flow and Novelty.

And thus is learning filled with the emotions and passions of the dead.

Water Dragon Year This Will Be

The Chinese calendar allows one of five elements and one of twelve animals to represent each year. The year that begins on 23 Jan is a water dragon year, which of course appears once in every 60 years.

It's therefore fairly appropriate to use the idiomatic blessing 龍馬精神 (longma jingshen) or 'spirit of the dragon-horse' at this time. It alludes to the virtues of the mythical dragon-horse, normally along the lines of having dynamic strength throughout a long life. But what's even more interesting is the fact that there's a perfectly good Germanic female name which means the same thing, more or less.

That name is 'Rosalind', which has nothing much to do with roses or linden trees. The elements hros and lind are Old English for 'horse' and 'serpent', and allude to the graceful power of the archetypal horse and the wise beauty of the archetypal serpent. It's also the name of a famous Shakespearean female lead: Rosalind from As You Like It, renowned for her wit and beauty, but also for her loyalty to friends.

Chess Associations

Sometimes I look at chess games and the names of the players and I find myself thinking of rather odd things. Right now, the London Chess Classic is on.

I see names like 'Levon Aronian' and I think of a left-handed fishwife. 'Magnus Carlsen' somehow makes me think of Charlemagne. 'Nigel Short' is one of my favourites, as it always makes me wonder what if he had met Mikhail Tal. David Howell is Chinese, while Hikaru Nakamura is American.

It's an amazing world. But Gens Una Sumus, as the International Chess Federation (FIDE) has as its motto — 'We're One Family'.

Google™ as a Source for Due Diligence

Recently, I learnt that a certain national-level corporate regulatory body had named its watering-hole 'Auschwitz'. I did wonder briefly if the decor matched the name, and I shuddered to think of why these accountants would do such a thing.

I saw a post on someone else's blog, though, which chastised them for this — as well as for naming their food courts 'S21', which this other person pointed out was the name of some prison where torture was carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. I found that a bit silly, although I suppose the two differ by degree and not by kind.

However, they also differ in other ways.

You can hardly Google 'Auschwitz' without coming upon what the vast majority of the world associates with the name — Nazi concentration camp, 'Arbeit Macht Frei', and at least half a million deaths (calculations go higher, but this is the most stable minimum) under horrible conditions and poison gas. There are about 20,000,000 search results all pointing the same way.

For 'S21', there are about 13,500,000 search results — and from the first page onwards, you already know that you might be looking at a code that can represent a Canon camcorder, an airport in Oregon, and a penicillin pill. You might miss by a bit and end up here, even.

The difference is clear. 'S21' is far more likely to be a tag which people don't necessarily associate with a nasty prison in Cambodia. That group of three characters doesn't carry enough significant information. But 'Auschwitz' is clearly enough for an association with the worst part of a terrible episode in human history.

Now that we can all Google™ these terms and examine the results, it's inexcusable to name your in-house pub 'Auschwitz'. 'S21' can be excused, although after you've read this, you might want to change it.

With Respect to Naming

This morning I had a friendly disagreement with a guy whom we shall call 'Jake' for now. Jake's thing was that people shouldn't make fun of other people's names; the cue for his discontent was my statement that someone else's name sounded as if it had come from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Jake said that to make fun of a name was disrespectful to a person and the parents who presumably bestowed that name.

I suppose I am inured to that particular perspective. I've grown up with a name that has too many syllables, too many alternative spellings, and too many rhymes — not all of them pretty. But when people make fun of my name(s), as so many have, and as so many will, I don't think of it as disrespect towards me or my ancestors.

I mean, supposing I had a son and I named him 'Defender of Men, He Who is Like Unto the God of War, Showing Piety and Undeserved Favour to Others', wouldn't you find it somewhat unusual? Or if I named my daughter 'Pure Parsley'? (Etymological note here: do not confuse 'Selina' with 'Selene'.) And people who name their daughters 'Linda' (= 'serpent') are fairly easy to find.

The point is that the names we adopt are just tags. Some tags have odd origins, some sound peculiar. People with nice names have better lives, people with odd names may stand out in a positive or negative way. But a lot of it depends on context, and sometimes, as with so many things, we feel for the person with the odd name, forgetting that this person has lived with it for decades and has come to terms with it — those who haven't normally get it changed as soon as they can.

That leads me to the case of a former classmate of mine. She had a name which sounded lovely in Mandarin but was transliterated into English with truly unfortunate consequences. Her name even went around the Internet as a sort of urban legend of naming awfulness. Yet, she's learnt to live with it, and has gone on record as saying she won't change it. If I had her name, I would be doing the deed poll thing faster than a speeding bullet; because she won't change it, I have enormous extra respect for that already respectable classmate.

Name of the Day: Iskandar

The name 'Iskandar' has deep power; it resonates across the entire span of Eurasia, a name that speaks of conquest and dominion, of patriarchal protection and of the role of a hero. Iskandar is the old Persian version of the Greek name Ἀλέξανδρος or Alexander.

The roots of the name are interesting to explore. It comes from alexein-, which means 'to defend, protect, ward, keep safely (against something); to turn away, avert or repel (something harmful)', and -andros, which is 'man'. It is therefore an epithet which describes a messianic quality, that of protecting humanity from its unnamed enemies. The most common English translation is 'defender of men', but it should be made clear that the defence alluded to is both active as well as passive.

It is said that when Alexander III of Macedon was born, his mother dreamt that a comet had struck her womb, which absorbed the blast. Then the seal of a lion appeared over it, glowing golden like a mark of kingship. It was from this image that Alexander the Great received the title, 'Lion of Macedon'.

In Scotland, the name underwent two changes; Scots Gaelic has it as 'Alastair' (or Alasdair, or Alistair, or half a dozen other regional variations), while the natural contraction was 'Sandy'. Similarly, the feminine 'Alexandra' has been shortened to 'Sandra'. This curious inability of the Scots to spell things right has led to confusion with another Greek word, alastor.

Naming someone 'Alastor', however, would be a rather unusual thing to do. The etymology of 'Alastor' is very different; it comes from the Greek alathein, which means 'to not forget', 'to not allow to be forgotten', or 'to not allow to go away'. This name was assigned to the Greek spirits of vengeance, giving it the sense of 'avenger'. That's an interesting thing; the name 'Alethea' is a feminine form and means 'truth' — 'that which is not forgotten', 'that which you do not forget' or 'that which does not go away'.

Displacement

Some distant chronicler will note that along the way, I left sealed notes concerning people with odd appellations. Who, for example, is Wolfberry? Who on earth was Trivandrum?

The answer to these questions, and many more, is that in some sense they are all figments of my imagination. I should hate to think that people might think of them in a way wholly informed by my strange imaginings. But, on the subject of 'strange imaginings'... well, I was once accused of using 'smearing innuendo'. Well, read through the whole blog and see if you can find any. No longer constrained by gentlemanly civility, I will say outright that there is none here.

Rather, I suspect that some people are prone to projection, a phenomenon in which people tend to attribute to others the habits of mind and body that they themselves possess. Then again, it might also be displacement, a phenomenon in which people tend to pick on harmless victims so as to disperse their rage (and other negative affect) towards objects which are dangerous or untouchable.

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Notes:

1. I have given many of my associates odd little names like 'Wolfberry' or 'Trivandrum'. I do this because I am genuinely fond of them despite my shortcomings and theirs. Haha. On the other hand, should I have accidentally referred to any specific person as 'Grand Inquisitor', I would probably not have meant it kindly.

2. This is my 1200th post! Wow, it's been a long journey indeed.

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?

The Power of Names (Part I)

There are some almost-forgotten people who in their lives have made a far-reaching impact on history. Quite often, this comes from the intensity of effect produced by superhuman conviction that they are right and that what they have done is righteous. Eventually, these people become adjectives, some by mere invention, some by enormous vision, some by serendipity.

In the years that have passed by, I have collected a few of these adjectival formations that speak to me specially, and a few that everyone is acquainted with. I have a little list, and if you like, you can add to it. Some of these are here for more than one reason; some are here for a reason that most people wouldn't think of using. I'll begin with five, and an obvious English bias.

Cromwellian, Orwellian, Churchillian, Keynesian, Newtonian

There. Comments?

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From Speedcuber: 'Machiavellian' — excellent, because it shifts the bias and I should have thought of that one myself; after all, he is the only one on the list so far to be quoted in my Master's thesis!

From Stark: a slew of musicians; but seriously, Rachmaninovian? I can deal with Wagnerian, and its associations with the Hitlerian, but the problem with musicians is that they tend not to define large swathes of history or cultural capital. And the problem with Bachian is... which Bach? Well, I tell you what, I'll scratch your Bach if you scratch mine. (The same problem occurs with Georgian, Edwardian and, to a lesser extent, Jacobean; Elizabethan and Victorian are fine.)

From Khayce: Shakespearean (which I've been trying to avoid, just having taught three of his blasted plays in the last few weeks), Hobbesian (remember the Leviathan!) and Kafkaesque. It seems that authors are more potent than composers.

From Kalmykia To Mexico

I can't wait much longer. The World Chess Championship Candidates Matches begin in Elista, Kalmykia, today. Four places for the Championship itself, in Mexico City, are at stake.

The match pairings themselves are a treat.

1. Levon Aronian v Magnus Carlsen

2. Peter Leko v Mikhail Gurevich

3. Ruslan Ponomariov v Sergei Rublevsky

4. Boris Gelfand v Rustam Kasimdzhanov

5. Etienne Bacrot v Gata Kamsky

6. Alexander Grischuk v Vladimir Malakhov

7. Judith Polgar v Evgeny Bareev

8. Alexei Shirov v Michael Adams

These sixteen players come from all over the place (although traditional chess-playing countries dominate): Armenia (1), England (1), France (1), Hungary (2), Israel (1), Norway (1), Russia (4), Spain (1), Turkey (1), Ukraine (1), USA (1), Uzbekistan (1). It's hard, without a chess database, to guess who comes from where. Casual blog-readers are invited to guess. Avid chess-players ought to know; after all, these are 16 of the world's best. Linguists will probably guess about half of them right. The main problem is the legacy of the Soviet hegemony and the subsequent diaspora. Heh. Politics – it crops up everywhere.

Nothing But Rain, Dear

Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen
Comet and Cupid and Donner und Blitzen

Yes, we're all familiar with these, from that silly commercial Rudolph song.

But here are some things to think about, although they might be nothing but reindeer.

1. Dasher, Prancer, Comet and Donner are male; Dancer, Vixen, Cupid and Blitzen are female. Yes, some don't seem to have their gender right. But then Donner is the Teutonic Thunder-God, not the Italian 'Donna'. And Blitzen is of course Lightning. Cupid ought to be male though. And Comet (from Latin coma, 'hair') ought to be female.

2. Why are there eight? There is a simple answer to this, of course. The whole of the Northern European Christmas symbology comes from Norse myth. Odin, the All-Father, is both a Christ figure (he hung upon Yggdrasil, the World-tree so that he would receive the wisdom to save the world from destruction) as well as the White Rider on the eight-legged conquering steed, Sleipnir. It's hard to believe in an eight-legged flying horse. I suppose eight flying reindeer must make better sense.

3. Midwinter is traditionally a gateway between the death of the old year and the life of the new year. Odin, white-bearded and one-eyed, is a power of gates and of death. He is also a power of winter and of storm. One of the older Norse deities was Üller, whose name is commemorated in the word 'Yuletide'. The time we call Christmas is an attempt to sanctify pagan winter rituals all over Europe by the power of the name of Christ, just as Easter is an attempt to sanctify pagan spring rituals.

And a Happy New Year to all!

Gratitude

It hit me this morning, as I was pouring ground Mocha Africana (from Mövenpick) into the cafetière, that 'gratitude' sounds like a conflation of 'great' and 'attitude', while 'latitude' sounds like a conflation of 'less' and 'attitude'. Then I said to myself, "That's a great idea, but it's a silly one, so I shall just feel good about it for a while and forget it." But then a very present help in time of moving came along, and I remembered to be grateful again, and so I couldn't quite forget the idea.

I am grateful to many people, who I suppose should remain relatively unnamed - this principle has always guided my blogging (except in the case of public figures). But how is it possible to express gratitude without names? With great difficulty. I think however that those who are being deliberately unnamed will know who they are. I elect to use verse, and use it more or less randomly, as namelessness permits.

Dancer and daughter;
Destroyer all black;
Grouchy young elflord
And clearer of stack;
Beckoning binder
And novelty earth;
All arbitrary
Reminder of worth;
Spider at centre,
Despoiler of shelves,
All should be happy
And proud of yourselves.

There are at least ten people hidden there, some more obvious than others. And of course, because it would be unfair or ungainly to try to squeeze more than sixty more names into verse, I must also thank those I have taught this year; none of my official students are (un)named above. I must thank them for bearing the burden of being taught by a strange person whose beliefs about education seem not to coincide with most other people's. I will try to be better next year, and God bless you all.