Japanese and Korean name 5 days of the week using words for traditional elements (fire, water, wood, metal, earth) and use the words for moon and sun in naming Sunday and Monday. Both languages combine those components with a 2nd component meaning day of the week. Table 1 shows the Japanese and Korean names in…… Continue reading Days of the week in East Asia
Tag: Name: personal
Irish challenge (3)
This post is the 3rd instalment of the Irish leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers those parts of chapters 1 and 2 of Teach Yourself Irish that I didn’t cover in the 2nd instalment. The 1st instalment covered Irish spelling and pronunciation. Questions and answers Yes and no Irish has no words for…… Continue reading Irish challenge (3)
Medieval sources of some French words
I picked up last year a useful book, aimed at a general audience, about the medieval origins of over 100 French words and phrases. The book is Les mots du Moyen Âge, Fabienne Calvayrac, Marion Vialade (2011, nouvelle edition) I’ve summarised below some that caught my eye. If you are interested, the book has a…… Continue reading Medieval sources of some French words
None is responsible, all can be absolved
I came across the following statement after the acknowledgements in linguist Neil Smith’s 1989 book The Twitter Machine: Reflections on Language: ‘None of the above has seen any part of this book, and can accordingly be absolved of all responsibility for errors and idiocies.’ Unfortunately, the 2nd clause (‘can accordingly be absolved…’) needs an explicit…… Continue reading None is responsible, all can be absolved
Shapes of male and female English names
In English, male names differ from female names, and both male and female names differ from other nouns: male names tend to be shorter than other nouns. female nouns tend to be longer than other nouns. female names are more likely than male names to contain stressed vowels with [i] and less likely to…… Continue reading Shapes of male and female English names
English Grammar Day 2024
I went last week to an event called English Grammar Day 2024 at the British Library. This event has been held for the last 10 years, but I went for the first time in 2023. The event is sponsored by UCL (the official short name of University College London), the University of Oxford and the…… Continue reading English Grammar Day 2024
Not-gormless again
As I have posted before, gormless is one of those strange inherently negative words with no positive counterpart. In that post, I included a picture of a restaurant at Copenhagen airport called Gorm’s. https://languagemiscellany.com/2021/08/can-you-negate-the-word-gormless/ I’ve recently found out a possible reason for using that name in Denmark. Denmark was ruled from about 936 to 1042…… Continue reading Not-gormless again
Persistence of memory
I was musing recently on how I remember names of people I haven’t seen for many years. That led on to thinking about how we remember vocabulary. In this short post, I mention 3 aspects of memory for names and words. Memory for names I’ve always had a good memory for names. I never had…… Continue reading Persistence of memory
What is the plural of Whalebelly?
I was recently writing for my family history blog Birds of Cressingham a piece about a family with the unusual name Whalebelly. Jonas Whalebelly – Birds of Cressingham (wordpress.com) I started wondering what I would write if I were talking about 2 (or more) people with that name. Should I write Whalebellies or Whalebellys? English…… Continue reading What is the plural of Whalebelly?
Who Put the ‘a’ in ‘Thomas a Becket’?
At primary school, I learned that 4 knights murdered Archbishop Thomas á Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Famously, the murderers had supposedly heard English king Henry II saying ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest’. It wasn’t clear whether Henry was asking the knights to kill Thomas, or whether he was just venting…… Continue reading Who Put the ‘a’ in ‘Thomas a Becket’?